just as the sun was setting. I looked in vain however for the region of
reeds and of water, which Mr. Oxley had seen to the westward; so
different in character were the seasons, and the state of the country at
the different periods in which the Surveyor-General and I visited it.
From the highest point I could gain I watched the sun descend; but I
looked in vain for the glittering of a sea beneath him, nor did the sky
assume that glare from reflected light which would have accompanied his
setting behind a mass of waters. I could discover nothing to intercept me
in my course. I saw, it is true, a depressed and dark region in the line
of the direction in which I was about to go. The terrestrial line met the
horizon with a sharp and even edge, but I saw nothing to stay my
progress, or to damp my hopes. As I had observed the country from Mount
Foster, so I found it to be when I advanced into it. I experienced little
difficulty therefore in passing the marshes of the Macquarie, and in
pursuing my course to the N. W. traversed plains of great extent, until
at length I gained the banks of the Darling, in lat. 30 degrees. S. and
in long. 146 degrees. E. This river, instead of flowing to the N. W. led
me to the S. W.; but I was ultimately obliged to abandon it in
consequence of the saltness of its waters. I could not, however, fail to
observe that the plains over which I had wandered were wholly deficient
in timber of any magnitude or apparently of any age, excepting the trees
which grew along the line of the rivers; that the soil of the plains was
sandy, and the productions almost exclusively salsolaceous. Their extreme
depression, indeed their general level, since they were not more than 250
or 300 feet above the level of the sea, together with their general
aspect, instinctively, as it were, led the mind to the conviction that
they had, at a comparatively recent period, been covered by the ocean. On
my return to the Blue Mountains, and on a closer examination of the
streams falling from them into the interior, I observed that at a certain
point, and that too nearly on the same meridian, they lost their