appearance of savages as I have seen them represented in theatres. Their
hair was of a reddish hue and they were altogether men of a different
make from the tribe of the Darling. We accordingly allowed them to remain
in the camp which I took up on the margin of the Murray soon after our
meeting with them. They told us that a creek named Bengallo joined the
Murray amongst the numerous lagoons where we had been encamped two days
before; and they supposed it came from the hills near the Bogan, because
natives from that river sometimes came to the Murray by the banks of the
creek. They also informed us that the name of a river to the southward
was Perrainga; and (if we understood each other rightly by Piper's
interpretation) their name for lake Alexandrina was Kayinga: a lake which
however had, according to them, a wide deep outlet to the sea.

THEY DECAMP DURING THE NIGHT.

During that night it rained heavily and the natives left us, without
notice, during an interval of fair weather. There was much scrub about
the river and I was not quite satisfied with the position of our camp,
but a strict watch was always kept up, and we had excellent watch-dogs,
no bad protection against the midnight treachery of the aborigines.

REACH THE DARLING AND SURPRISE A NUMEROUS TRIBE OF NATIVES.

May 30.

We heard our new acquaintance cooeying in the bush but we gave no
attention to them and proceeded on our journey. The smooth and verdant
escarp of the river-berg guided us, while the river itself was sometimes
at hand and sometimes four miles off. This day I recognised several
shrubs which I had seen before only on the Darling. At length the berg
terminated altogether in a smooth round hill beyond which lay a low woody
country, intersected by lines of yarra trees in almost every direction. I
thought I perceived in one of these lines the course of the Darling
coming into the extensive valley from the northward; and the old hands
exclaimed, when they saw the bare plains to the north-west of our camp,
that we had got upon the Darling at last. Beyond this valley to the
south-westward I perceived that the bergs of the opposite bank of the
Murray were continuous and advanced to a point about west-south-west.
Upon the whole I was satisfied that we were near the junction of the two
rivers; and we encamped on the lower extremity of the point, already
mentioned, which overlooked a small lagoon and was not above three
hundred yards from an angl