ch indeed, where we approached it, formed
its highest bank and were there twenty-three feet above the water.

No time was lost in launching our boat, and we effected a passage and
encamped on the opposite bank before sunset, having driven all the cattle
and horses safely across also, although with considerable difficulty from
the steepness of the banks and softness of the soil at the water's edge
on the side where they got to land.

October 16.

This morning the river had fallen three inches; its temperature was 59
degrees (of Fahrenheit) the current flowing at the rate of 1 1/4 miles
per hour; the mean depth two fathoms; and the width, where measured, 47
yards; the breadth of the river King at the junction being nearly as
much. The right bank to the distance of a mile and a half from the river
was low and alluvial, and intersected by narrow watercourses and lagoons.
On the alluvial flat where we crossed it stood a small isolated hill,
between which and the higher ground still farther back water was running,
apparently from a swamp, but as soon as we crossed this we reached firm
ground and travelled on an open forest plain for nearly eight miles.

ASCEND GRANITIC RANGES.

We then came upon a hill of granite, and from its summit I perceived that
we were already on the northern extremities of the high ranges we had
seen from the westward. After travelling some miles along the summits of
ridges in order to reach their connection with another range more to the
northward, I ascertained, on crossing the highest part of a second ridge,
that its northern slopes were very steep and rocky. A hill of
considerable height lay before us and therefore, as soon as I had
selected a spot for our camp in a little intervening valley, I hastened
to it, certainly in doubt how we should extricate the carts from the
rocky fastnesses before us. That summit afforded a commanding view of the
country beyond the granitic range, and I perceived that it was low to a
considerable distance northward, while the ranges beyond that extensive
basin seemed of no great elevation to the westward or north-west, and all
terminated on the level interior country where the horizon was broken by
only one remarkable hill which, as I afterwards learnt, was named Dingee.
In that direction I saw also open plains along which I thought I could
trace the line of the Ovens. In the lower country before me I hoped to
find the Murray, according to the map of Messrs. Hovel