of the water rising six or eight feet above its present level. The banks were eighteen feet high. The general depth of water was from one to four feet, and, at first, I thought it stagnant. In my rambles, however, I found a part where there was a run; but you will hardly credit me, when I tell you its size. It was actually less than I could span: it was from one to two inches deep only, and had a fall of about six inches. This was the whole breadth of the water: the bed of the river, in this spot, being a large ironstone rock, over which I walked.
"February 8th.—Crossed several dry beds, over an indifferent country, and two branches of the Sleeman, one dry, the other inconsiderable. We eventually got into our old track near the plain, where the soil was tolerable, the first day. We afterwards turned to the left a little, and slept on one of the small branches of our first day's river.—Reached home in the afternoon, having given the party a great part of the day, to enable them to carry some game into the settlement; but they met with no success.
"The land, during the whole of my excursion, was generally bad; but it could hardly be expected otherwise in the route I took. I hear continued good accounts of that in the interior, but it is now in want of water; and I find that is usually the case two or three months in the year; wells, however, might be dug. Mokărē gives me the names of tribes he has heard of to a great distance northward, and says he understands their country to be very fine, but they have no rivers. All their water is procured from lakes or wells."
I now resume my narrative, with a few general remarks on our journey.—1st, Had we followed the advice of the native, and proceeded in the direction he wished us, I have no doubt we should have been enabled to give a much more favourable account of the fertility of the soil; as, from his report, and the observation of Mr. Baxter, joined to the knowledge acquired by ourselves, I believe that a great extent of good land exists
