small quantity of water, yet what remained was good.  Charley, who returned afterwards, said that he had been before at this water-hole, and had found a tribe of natives encamped on it, one of whom lifted his spear against him, but his courage forsook him upon observing Charley still riding towards him, when he and the whole camp took to their heels, leaving a good supply of Convolvulus roots, and of Terminalia gum behind them.  We found shells of Cymbium and Cytherea, an enormous waddie, which could have been wielded only by a powerful arm, nets and various instruments for fishing, in their deserted camp.

August 7.—­I thought it advisable to stop here, and give our meat a fair drying.  The natives were not seen again.  Charley and John took a ride to procure some game, and came to a salt-water creek, which joined the river about three miles from our camp; the river flowed in a very winding course from the eastward.  They found some good fresh water-holes, at the head of the salt-water.

August 8.—­We travelled about seven miles E.S.E. over plains and Ironbark ridges.  The approaches of the creek, broken by watercourses and gullies, were covered with thickets of raspberry-jam trees.  The rock cropped out frequently in the creek, which was said to be very rocky lower down.  The salt-water Hibiscus, a species of Paritium, Adr.  Juss. (Hibiscus tiliaceus?  Linn.  D.C.  Prodr.  I. p. 454) grew round the water-holes.  We found the same little tree at the salt-water rivers on the west coast of the gulf, and at Port Essington.  I had formerly seen it at the sea coast of Moreton Bay; its bark is tough and fibrous, and the heart-wood is brown with a velvety lustre.

August 9.—­When Charley returned with the horses, he told us, that, when he was sitting down to drink at a water-hole about three miles up the creek, ten emus came to the other side of the water; keeping himself quiet, he took a careful aim, and shot one dead; then mounting his horse immediately, he pursued the others, and approaching them very near, succeeded in shooting another.  He broke the wings of both and concealed them under water.  It is a singular custom of the natives, that of breaking the wings upon killing an emu; as the wings could only slightly assist the animal in making its escape, should it revive.  But in conversation with Brown as to the possibility of one of the emus having escaped, he said very seriously:  “Blackfellow knows better than white fellow; he never leaves the emu without breaking a wing.  Blackfellows killed an emu once, and went off intending to call their friends to help them to eat, and when they came back, they looked about, looked about, but there was no emu; the emu was gone—­therefore the Blackfellows always broke the wings of the emus they killed afterwards.”  This was, however, very probably one of Brown’s yarns, made up for the occasion.