Mr. Gilbert and Charley, when on a reconnoitring ride, met another party of natives; among them two gins were so horror-struck at the unwonted sight, that they immediately fled into the scrub; the men commenced talking to them, but occasionally interrupted their speeches by spitting and uttering a noise like pooh! pooh! apparently expressive of their disgust.

March 23.—­The party moved on about ten miles to the north-east, and encamped at the junction of a large creek which comes from the S.S.E.  Its character is similar to that of the Suttor; and I should not be surprised if it should prove to be the northern anabranch of that creek, and which we crossed on the 17th of March, the day before we arrived at the lake.

The country opens into lightly-timbered ridges, which are composed of a hard rock, the sharp pieces of which covered the ground, and made our animals foot-sore.  It seems to me to be a clayey sandstone (Psammite) penetrated by silica.  A coarse-grained sandstone and quartzite cropped out in that part of the river situated between the two camps.  The melon-holes of the box-flats were frequently over-grown with the polygonaceous plant, mentioned at a former occasion; and the small scrub plains were covered with a grey chenopodiaceous plant from three to four feet high.  The stiff-leaved Cymbidium was still very common, and two or three plants of it were frequently observed on the same tree; its stem is eatable, but glutinous and insipid.

The morning of Easter Sunday was very clear and hot; the wind from E.N.E.  As soon as we had celebrated the day with a luncheon of fat damper and sweetened tea, I rode with Charley about seven or eight miles down the river, and found abundance of water, not only in the bed of the river, but in lines of lagoons parallel to it.  Charley shot several ducks, which were very numerous upon the water.  Whilst riding along the bank of the river, we saw an old woman before us, walking slowly and thoughtfully through the forest, supporting her slender and apparently exhausted frame with one of those long sticks which the women use for digging roots; a child was running before her.  Fearing she would be much alarmed if we came too suddenly upon her,—­as neither our voices in conversation, nor the footfall of our horses, attracted her attention,—­I cooeed gently; after repeating the call two or three times, she turned her head; in sudden fright she lifted her arms, and began to beat the air, as if to take wing,—­then seizing the child, and shrieking most pitifully, she rapidly crossed the creek, and escaped to the opposite ridges.  What could she think; but that we were some of those imaginary beings, with legends of which the wise men of her people frighten the children into obedience, and whose strange forms and stranger doings are the favourite topics of conversation amongst the natives at night when seated round their fires?