forest, of a more or less open character. In the rainy season, the whole
valley is probably covered with water; for we frequently observed the
marks of torrents rushing down from the hills; and, along the foot of the
ridges, ponds and lagoons were frequent. The heat of summer had already
burnt up a great part of the grasses; and it was only in the immediate
neighbourhood of the river that there was any appearance of verdure. The
bed of the river became drier, and changed its character considerably.
Charley stated, that he had seen a large plain extending for many miles
to the south-west, and a high mountain to the north. Several emus,
pigeons, and ducks were seen. Mr. Calvert found concretions of marl in
the creek. John Murphy caught a great number of crawfish. For the first
time since leaving the Condamine, we were visited by a thunder-storm.
Cumuli generally during the afternoon, with wind from the W.N.W; during
the night it usually clears up.

Nov. 10.--The country along the river changed, during the last two
stages, considerably for the worse. The scrub approached very near to the
banks of the river, and, where it receded, a disagreeable thicket of
Bastard-box saplings filled almost the whole valley: fine lagoons were
along the river, frequently far above its level; the river itself divided
into anabranches, which, with the shallow watercourses of occasional
floods from the hills, made the whole valley a maze of channels, from
which we could only with difficulty extricate ourselves. "I never saw
such a rum river, in my life," said my blackfellow Charley.

The open forest was sometimes one large field of everlasting flowers with
bright yellow blossoms; whilst the scrub plains were thickly covered with
grasses and vervain. Almost all the grasses of Liverpool Plains grow
here. Ironstone and quartz pebbles were strewed over the ground; and, in
the valley, fine-grained sandstone with layers of iron-ore cropped out.