f Mr. Scrutton: the
feed being good and water plentiful, the halt served the double
purpose of recruiting their strength, and allowing the Leader to
choose the best road for them. Steering N.E. by E. at a mile, they
passed through a gap in the low range of table-topped hills of red
and white sandstone which had been skirted on the way down: through
this gap a small creek runs into the river, which they ran up,
N.N.E., 3 miles further, on to a small shallow creek, with a little
water in it. Travelling over lightly-timbered sandy ridges, barren
and scrubby, but without stone, at 9 or 10 miles they crossed the
head of a sandy creek, rising in a spring, about 60 yards wide,
having about 5 or 6 inches of water in it. The creek runs through
mimosa and garrawon scrub for 5 miles, and the spring occurs on the
side of a scrubby ridge, running into the creek from the west. At 18
miles they struck an ana-branch having some fine lagoons in it, and
half-a-mile further on a river 100 yards wide, waterless, and the
channels filled up with melaleuca and grevillea; this, though not
answering to Leichhardt's description, they supposed to be an
ana-branch of the Lynd; its course was north-west. They followed its
left bank down for three miles, then crossing it, they bore N.N.E.
for four miles, through level and sometimes flooded country, when
their course was arrested by a line of high ridges, dispelling the
idea that they were on the Lynd waters. Turning west they now
travelled back to the river, and crossing it, camped on one of the
same chain of lagoons which they first struck in the morning, and in
which they were able to catch some fish for supper. The distance
travelled was 28 miles.

'October' 25.--It was impossible to believe that the stream they
were now camped on was the Lynd. Leichhardt's description at the
point where they had supposed that they should strike it, made it
stony and timbered with iron-bark and box. Now, since leaving the
Einasleih they had not seen a single box or iron-bark tree, or a
stone. Frank Jardine therefore determined to push out to thenorth-east,
and again seek this seemingly apocryphal stream. After travelling
for eight miles through sandy ridges, scrubby and timbered with
blood-wood, messmate, and melaleuca (upright-leaved) they struck a
sandy creek, bearing north; this they followed for five miles, when
it turned due west, as if a tributary of the stream they had left in
the morning.