vation, from the summit of which I had a view of other high lands; one
to the S.W. being a very fine mountain. As I had not found any water
excepting in two creeks, which I had left far behind me, and as I had got
on a soil which appeared incapable of holding it, I made this the
termination of my journey, having exceeded 100 miles in distance from the
camp, on my return to which I found Mr. Hume still absent. When he joined,
he stated to me, that not making the Castlereagh as soon as he expected,
he had bent down westerly for the Macquarie, and that he ended his journey
at some gentle hills he had made; so that it appeared we must either have
crossed each other's line of route, or that they were very near, and that
want of length must alone have prevented them from crossing; but as such
all assumption led to the conclusion that the Macquarie no longer existed,
I determined to pursue a middle course round the swamps, to ascertain the
point; as in case the river had ended, a westerly course was the one which
my instructions directed me to pursue.

In the immediate neighbourhood of the marshes we were obliged to sink
wells for water, and it was thus early that we began to feel the want of a
regular supply.

Having made a creek about four miles from our position by cutting through
the reeds where there was a narrow space, we pursued a westerly course
over a plain, having every appearance of frequent inundation, and for four
or five days held nearly the same direction; in the course of which we
crossed both our tracks on the excursions we had made, which had
intersected each other in a dense oak brush; thus renewing the few doubts,
or rather the doubt we had as to the fate of the Macquarie, whose course
we had been sent to trace. Indeed, had I not felt convinced that that
river had ceased, I should not have moved westward without further
examination, but we had passed through a very narrow part of the marshes,
and round the greater part of them, and had not seen any hollow that could
by any possible exaggeration be construed into or mistaken for the channel
of a river.

It appears, then, that the Macquarie, flowing as it does for so many
miles, through a bed, and not a declining country, and having little water
in it, except in times of flood, loses its impetus long ere it reaches the
formidable barrier that opposes its progress northwards; the soil in which
the reeds grow being a stiff clay. Its waters consequently spread,