s' journey, he found that the Barcoo turned to the west, and even
north of west. The channel now showed large reaches of water within its
confines, some of them more than one hundred yards in width. This induced
him to alter his plan, and he thought he should follow such an important
watercourse and ascertain its outflow. He therefore turned back for the
remainder of his party. On the 30th of August he discovered a large river
coming from the North-North-East, and he named it the Thomson. With the
usual inconsistency of Australian inland rivers, the Thomson soon
presented another and different scene. The great pastoral stretches of
the upper course were left behind, and were succeeded by flat and
inferior country intersected by sand-ridges. The course of the river
itself once more turned to the southward, and was but scantily watered.
Still Kennedy persevered until convinced that further progress must bring
him to Sturt's furthest on Cooper's Creek. The face of the land answered
to Sturt's description; and grass and feed both beginning to fail him,
Kennedy had to consider whether it was worth while risking the lives of
his men to confirm what was practically a certainty. At last vistas of
the desert, described by Sturt with such terrible fidelity, appeared
stretching away to the horizon, and Kennedy turned back, satisfied that
the Victoria River and Cooper's Creek were one and the same stream.

It was now Kennedy's intention to make an excursion towards the Gulf of
Carpentaria. On his way down, in order to travel lighter, he had buried a
large quantity of flour and sugar as well as his drays. When he arrived
at the cache of provisions on his way back, he found that the natives had
dug the rations up, and in mere wantonness had so mixed and scattered
them as to render them useless. A little further on, he was just in time
to save the carts, for an aboriginal was probing in the ground with a
spear to ascertain their whereabouts. During this excursion Kennedy
noticed that the blacks were given to "chewing tobacco in a green state;"
but the "tobacco" was, of course, the pituri plant, which they are
accustomed to masticate. By the time he reached the head of the Warrego,
Kennedy was too short of provisions to attempt his projected Gulf
expedition, and had to make homeward, but resolved to go down by that
river and ascertain whether it joined the Darling or flowed westward.

The Warrego dividing into many dry channels when the