When I returned to the camp, Mr. Gilbert told me, that Mr. Roper and John Murphy had been on a mountain towards the head of the main creek, north-west from our camp, and that they had seen an open country before them.  I therefore started, on the 2d December, with Mr. Gilbert to examine it.  Our admiration of the valley increased at every step.  The whole system of creeks and glens which join “Ruined Castle Creek,” would form a most excellent cattle station.  With the exception of the narrow gorge through which the main creek passes to join the Creek of Palms [Mr. Arrowsmith is of opinion that such a junction is improbable, if the author is alluding to the creek, called Palm Tree Creek, which he fell in with about 60 miles to the S.E.—­Ed.] to the south-east, which might be shut by a fence not thirty yards long; and of the passable ranges to the north-west, which lead into a new country, and which form the pass seen by Roper and Murphy, it is everywhere surrounded by impassable barriers.  Beautiful grass, plenty of water in the lower part of the creek, and useful timber, unite to recommend this locality for such a purpose.  The creeks to the east and south-east are also equally adapted for cattle stations.  After passing a stony ridge covered with spotted-gum, from which the remarkable features of the country around us—­the flat-topped mountain wall, the isolated pillars, the immense heaps of ruins towering over the summits of the mountains—­were visible, we descended a slope of silver-leaved Ironbark, and came to a chain of water-holes falling to the east.  Travelling in a north-westerly direction, and passing over an openly timbered country, for about two miles, we came to the division of the waters, on a slight ridge which seemed to connect two rather isolated ranges.  We followed a watercourse to the northward, which, at seven miles [In the original drawing the watercourse is not more than two miles long, according to Mr. Arrowsmith, so that seven miles must be a mistake.—­Ed.] lower down, joined an oak-tree creek, coming from the ranges to the eastward.  Here water was very scarce; the banks of the creek were covered with Bricklow scrub; and a bush-fire, which had recently swept down the valley, had left very little food for our cattle:  the blady-grass, however, had begun to show its young shoots, and the vegetation, on some patches of less recent burnings, looked green.  Sterculia (heterophylla?) and the Bottle-tree, were growing in the scrub; and many Wonga-Wonga pigeons (Leucosarcia picata, Gould.) were started from their roosting-places under the old trees in the sandy bed of the creek.  We caught a young curlew; and Mr. Gilbert shot two Wonga-Wongas, and three partridge-pigeons (Geophaps scripta).  The latter abound in the silver-leaved Ironbark forest, where the grass has been recently burned.

After having contended with scrubs, with swamps, and with mountains, we were again doomed to grapple with our old enemy, the silver-leaved Bricklow, and a prickly Acacia with pinnate leaves, much resembling the A. farnesiana of Darling Downs.