turf. The natives,
however, frequently burn the high and stiff grass, particularly along
shady creeks, with the intention of driving the concealed game out of it;
and we have frequently seen them watching anxiously, even for lizards,
when other game was wanting.

August 3.--We travelled, for the first two miles, N. 60 degrees W. over
scrubby ironstone ridges, and then entered upon a fine plain, from which
smoke was seen to the west and north-west. I chose the latter direction,
and passed over ironstone ridges covered with stunted silver-leaved
Ironbark; and a species of Terminalia, a small tree, with long spathulate
glaucous leaves, slightly winged seed-vessels, and with an abundance of
fine transparent eatable gum; of which John and Brown gathered a great
quantity. Some of the ridges were openly timbered with a rather stunted
white-gum tree, and were well grassed; but the grass was wiry and stiff.
At the end of our stage, about sixteen miles distant from our last camp,
we crossed some rusty-gum forest; and encamped at a fine water-hole in
the bed of a rocky creek, shaded by the white drooping gum, which seemed
to have taken the place of the flooded gum. Groves of Pandanus spiralis
grew along the creek, which ran to the north by east. All the small
watercourses we passed, inclined to the eastward. Charley found the shell
of a Cytherea on an old camping-place of the natives, which indicated our
approach to the salt water.

A native had carved a representation of the foot of an emu in the bark of
a gum-tree; and he had performed it with all the exactness of a good
observer. It was the first specimen of the fine arts we had witnessed in
our journey.

August 4.--We travelled about ten miles west-north-west, over scrubby
ridges, plains, and box-flats. In a patch of rusty-gum forest we found
Acacia equisetifolia, and the dwarf Grevillea of the upper Lynd in
blossom; the thyrsi of scarlet flowers of the latter were particularly
beautiful. As we entered into the plains, Binoe's Trichinium and
Salicornia re-appeared.

I steered towards the smoke of a Blackfellow's fire, which we saw rising
on the plains; the fire was attended to by a gin. Charley went forward to
examine a belt of trees visible in the distance; and John Murphy followed
a hollow in the plain, and succeeded in finding a fine lagoon, about half
a mile long, partly rocky and partly muddy, surrounded by Polygonums, and
fields of Salicornia. A few gum trees, and r