e, to be seen to
break the stillness of the forest. The native dogs alone wandered about,
though they had scarcely strength to avoid us; and their melancholy howl,
breaking in upon the ear at the dead of the night, only served to impress
more fully on the mind the absolute loneliness of the desert.

It appeared, from their traces that the natives had lingered on this
ground, on which they had perhaps been born, as long as it continued to
afford them a scanty though precarious subsistence; but that they had at
length been forced from it. Neither fish nor muscles remained in the
creek, nor emus nor kangaroos on the plains. How then could an European
expect to find food in deserts through which the savage wandered in vain?
There is no doubt of the fate that would have overtaken any one of the
party who might have strayed away, and I was happy to find that Norman's
narrow escape had made a due impression on the minds of his comrades.

SANDY PLAINS; LEAVE THE CREEK.

We passed some considerable plains, lying to the eastward of the creek, on
parts of which the grass, though growing in tufts, was of luxuriant
growth. They were, however, more generally covered with salsola and
rhagodia, and totally destitute of other vegetation, the soil upon them
being a red sandy loam. The paths across the plains, which varied in
breadth from three to eight miles, were numerous; but they had not been
recently trodden. The creek continued to have a thick brush of casuarina
and acacia near it, to the westward of which there was a rising open
forest track; the timber upon it being chiefly box, cypress, and the
acacia longifolia. It was most probably connected with New Year's Range,
those elevations being about thirty miles distant. It terminated in some
gentle hills which, though covered in places with acacia shrub, were
sufficiently open to afford an extensive view. From their summit Oxley's
Table Land, towards which we had been gradually working our way, was
distinctly visible, distant about twenty miles, and bearing by compass
W. by S. On descending from these hills (called the Pink Hills, from the
colour of a flower upon them) which were scattered over with fragments of
slaty quartz, we traversed a box flat, apparently subject to overflow,
having a barren sandy scrub to its left. I had desired the men to preserve
a W.N.W. direction, on leaving them, supposing that that course would have
kept them near the creek; but, on overtaking the party