August 22.—­We travelled about eighteen miles N.N.W., to those water-holes we had found on our reconnoitring ride.  Their latitude was 17 degrees 39 minutes.  The country was so very scrubby and difficult, that we travelled from morning until long after sunset before we reached the place.  The long journey had both tired and galled our bullocks and horses, and our packs had been torn into pieces by the scrub.  This induced me to stay a day at this creek (which I called Moonlight Creek, as it had been found and explored during moonlight), to allow some rest both to my bullocks and myself, whom the long riding had much exhausted, and also to re-arrange our packs.

The composition of the scrub depended on the nature of the soil.  The narrow-leaved tea-tree, in shrubs from five to seven feet high, and the broad-leaved tea-tree from twenty to twenty-five feet high, grew on a sandy loam, with many ant-hills between them; the little Severn tree and the glaucous Terminalia preferred the light sandy soil with small ironstone pebbles, on which the ant-hills were rare, or entirely wanting; the raspberry-jam tree crowded round water-holes, which were frequently rocky; and the bloodwood, the leguminous Iron-bark, the box, and apple-gum, formed patches of open forest.

We collected a great quantity of Terminalia gum, and prepared it in different ways to render it more palatable.  The natives, whose tracks we saw everywhere in the scrub, with frequent marks where they had collected gum—­seemed to roast it.  It dissolved with difficulty in water:  added to gelatine soup, it was a great improvement; a little ginger, which John had still kept, and a little salt, would improve it very much.  But it acted as a good lenient purgative on all of us.

We found the days, when travelling in the scrub, excessively hot, for the surrounding vegetation prevented us from feeling the sea-breeze; very cold easterly and south-easterly winds prevailed during the night.

August 24.—­Mr. Calvert and Brown, whom I had sent to reconnoitre the country, returned with the sad intelligence that they had found no water.  They had crossed a great number of creeks of different sizes, with fine rocky water-holes, which seemed all to rise in scrubby ironstone hills, and had a course from S. W. to N. E. and E. N. E.; but towards their heads they were dry, and lower down they contained salt water.  The two explorers had unfortunately forgotten their bag of provisions, and were consequently compelled to return before they could accomplish their object.  As I anticipated a very long stage, and perhaps a camp without water, I had some wallabi skins softened and tied over our quart pots filled with water, which enabled us to carry about eight quarts with us.