allabies and some ducks, but were seldom able to shoot
any of them; we had not seen more than four or five emus altogether since
we started; a few brown hawks which we occasionally shot, were almost the
only addition we were enabled to make to our small ration. To-day we got
an iguana and two ducks, which with the water in which our mutton was
boiled, would have made us a good pot of soup, had there been any
substance in the mutton. Even thin as it was, we were very glad to get
it. The rivers also seemed to contain but few fish, as we only caught a
few of two different kinds, one of which without scales, resembled the
catfish, caught near Sydney;* the other was a dark thick fish with
scales.

(*Footnote. Plotosus macrocephalus.)

September 10.

Finding that the river continued running to the westward, and not as we
had hoped towards Princess Charlotte's Bay, we left it and turned in a
northerly direction, travelling over very rocky ridges covered with
cochlospermums and acacias, interspersed with occasional patches of open
forest land, and strewed with isolated blocks of course granite
containing crystals of quartz and laminae of white mica. Prayers as usual
at eleven o'clock.

We had not seen natives for several days, but this night, whilst one of
the party was keeping watch, a short distance from the fire, about eleven
o'clock, he heard the chattering of the blacks. Three spears were almost
immediately thrown into the camp and fell near the fire, but fortunately
without injuring any of the party. We fired a few shots in the direction
from which the spears came; the night being so dark that we could not see
them. We entertained fears that some of our horses might be speared, as
they were at some distance from the camp, but fortunately the blacks
offered us no further molestation.

September 11 and 12.

We pursued our northern course, the ground becoming very rotten; by the
sides of small creeks in sandy flats were belts of broad-leafed
Melaleucas and Grevilleas. We met with scrubs of Leptospermum, Fabricia,
and Dodonaea. By the creeks, when the ground was sandy, we saw Abrus
precatorius, and a small tree about fifteen feet high, with bi-pinnate
leaves, the leaflets very small, with long flat legumes containing ten or
twelve black and red seeds, like those of Abrus precatorius, but rather
larger.

September 13 and 14.

Most part of these days we travelled over a country of stiff soil,
covered with iron-bark,