r, from which we started successive flights of
pigeons. At this place Mr. Campbell and party halted with the horses
while Mr. Allison and I went about a mile westward onto the plain, where
he made the altitude 86 degrees 30 minutes, which makes the latitude 20
degrees 6 minutes, agreeing with the latitude of my dead reckoning and
with an observation I made of a star last night; at 3 Jemmy, who had gone
down the river, returned without finding any water, except what was left
by the last thunderstorm; and as he told me I was following up a river,
and not down, I too hurriedly believed him, and made up my mind to return
to a waterhole that Fisherman had found to the right of our course in the
bed of the river. At the waterhole I found blacks, but, as I always avoid
them when I can, after I had a short interview with them we started down
the river to the water Jemmy had found, following along the right bank as
we had the left before; at 4.40 made two miles and three-quarters down
the river to where we crossed, near its junction, a river or a branch of
one from north-west; at 5.8 made one mile and a half back to where Mr.
Allison went on the plain to get an observation; at 5.20 made half a mile
south; at 5.40 made one mile south to where the river has two channels;
the one trending to the west of south we crossed, between the two
channels of the river; at 5.53 made half a mile south to where the left
channel of the river was full of water and fine grass on its banks, on
the right bank of which we formed our twenty-third camp, at the place
where Mr. Allison made an observation of the sun. The country is very
level and the watercourses are unconfined, and in times of floods the
water overflows the low banks of the different channels. The blacks we
saw today appear to be circumcised; three of them approached us, one of
whom was the old blackfellow we had seen yesterday. Their name for water
we thought from what they said was oto. We presented them with a tin pot
and two empty glass bottles with which they were very much pleased.

Friday December 27. Camp Number 23, situated on the Herbert River.

Left camp at 8.24 a.m. to go down the river; at 8.35 made half a mile
south-south-west to where we crossed, near its junction, a western
channel of the river; at this place there are flats covered with bushes
like saltbush, which the horses eat. These bushes I have observed on the
western plains from Rockhampton and on most of the low s