9th, about thirteen miles north by west from our camp at Sterculia
Creek. About a mile from the river, we passed a large swampy lagoon,
round which the natives had burned the grass. Several flocks of whistling
ducks (Leptotarsis Eytoni, GOULD) and many black Ibises were here. We
heard the call of the "Glucking bird" every night during the last
fortnight, particularly from about 2 to 5 o'clock a.m. I called this
river the "Red Kangaroo River;" for, in approaching it, we first saw the
Red Forester of Port Essington (Osphanter antilopinus, GOULD). The
longitude, according to my reckoning, was 136 degrees.

Oct. 2.--We travelled about eleven miles north by west, to lat. 15
degrees 25 minutes 18 seconds, over an undulating country, if possible
even worse than that of the last two stages. Low sandy rises were covered
with stringy-bark trees and saplings, and the depressions were either
thickly beset with different species of Acacia, of Pultanaea, of the
broad-stemmed Bossiaea, or formed shallow basins of red ironstone covered
and surrounded with tea-tree scrub. On the higher elevations, the
Cypress-pine thickets proved even worse than the scrub. We crossed only
one sandy little creek, and came, at the end of the stage, to the head of
a small Pandanus creek, which improved rapidly, and, a little way down,
contained fine Nymphaea ponds. Charley went still farther down, and, in
an old camp of the natives, found Cythereas and the head of a crocodile.

It was during this stage, and among the scrub and underwood of the sandy
hills, that we first met with Grevillea pungens (R. Br.), a shrub from
two to five feet high, with pale-green pinnatifid pungent leaves, and
racemes of red flowers. Flagellaria indica, L. was very abundant near the
creek; and our bullocks fed heartily upon it: particularly in this most
wretched country, where the grass was scanty and hard.

Although the days were exceedingly hot, the air immediately before and
after sunrise was most agreeable.

Oct. 3.--We travelled about six miles and a half north by west, over a
country equally scrubby as that of the preceding stage. The saplings had
been killed by a bush fire, and a hurricane, which must have swept over
the country some years ago, had broken and uprooted the larger trees,
which lay all to the west and north-west. Since then, saplings had sprung
up, and, with the remains of the old trees, formed a most impervious
scrubby thicket, through which we could move