er-holes, to allow our cattle to recover.
It was a lovely place. The country around us was very open, and agreeably
diversified by small clusters of the raspberry-jam tree. Salicornia and
Binoe's Trichinium indicated the neighbourhood of salt water; but the
grass was good and mostly young. The creek was shaded by drooping
tea-trees and the broad-leaved Terminalia, which also grew scattered over
the flats. The water-hole on which we were encamped was about four feet
deep, and contained a great number of guard-fish, which, in the morning,
kept incessantly springing from the water. A small broad fish with sharp
belly, and a long ray behind the dorsal fin, was also caught. It was
highly amusing to watch the swarms of little finches, of doves, and
Ptilotis, which came during the heat of the day to drink from our water
hole. Grallina australis, Crows, Kites, Bronze-winged and Harlequin
pigeons, (Peristera histrionica, GOULD), the Rose cockatoo (Cocatua Eos),
the Betshiregah (Melopsittacus undulatus), and Trichoglossus versicolor,
GOULD, were also visitors to the water-hole, or were seen on the plains.
The day was oppressively hot; and neither the drooping tea-trees, nor our
blankets, of which we had made a shade, afforded us much relief Clouds
gathered, however, in the afternoon, and we had a few drops of rain in
the course of the night and following morning. Charley and John had gone
out on horseback to obtain some emus, with which the country seemed to
abound; they returned, however, at night, without any emus, but brought
in about twenty-two whistling and black ducks, one goose and several
waders, which they had obtained at a lagoon which was several miles in
length, and varied from 50 to 300 yards in breadth, covered with
Nymphaeas, and fringed with a dense vegetation; it was surrounded by fine
pasture. Never, as they described, had they seen so many ducks and geese
together; when they rose, their numbers darkened the air, and their noise
was deafening. They had observed a wooden post, cut with an iron
tomahawk, rammed in the ground and propped with several large stones;
which seemed to be the work either of white men or Malays.

Oct. 19.--We travelled about four miles north 30 degrees west, over
plains and an open undulating box and raspberry jam tree country, to the
lagoon which my companions had discovered. They had not exaggerated their
account, neither of the beauty of the country, nor of the size of the
lagoon, nor o