REDUCED--NATIVES SPEAR A HORSE--CHRISTMAS RANGES--BROWN'S
LAGOONS--THUNDER-STORMS--ALBINIA DOWNS--COMET CREEK--NATIVE CAMP.


Dec. 1.--I rode to the eastward from our camp, to ascertain how far we
were from the water-hole to which I had intended to conduct my party.
After having ascended the gullies, and passed the low scrub and
cypress-pine thicket which surrounds them, I came into the open forest,
and soon found our tracks, and the little creek for which I had steered
the day before. This creek, however, soon became a rocky gully, and
joined a large creek, trending to the east and south-east. Disheartened
and fatigued, I returned to the camp, resolved upon following down the
course of the Boyd to the south-west, until I should come into a more
open country. On my way back, I fell in with a new system of gullies,
south of the creek I had left, and east of the creek on which our camp
was, and which I had called "The Creek of the Ruined Castles," because
high sandstone rocks, fissured and broken like pillars and walls and the
high gates of the ruined castles of Germany, rise from the broad sandy
summits of many hills on both sides of the valley.

When I returned to the camp, Mr. Gilbert told me, that Mr. Roper and John
Murphy had been on a mountain towards the head of the main creek,
north-west from our camp, and that they had seen an open country before
them. I therefore started, on the 2d December, with Mr. Gilbert to
examine it. Our admiration of the valley increased at every step. The
whole system of creeks and glens which join "Ruined Castle Creek," would
form a most excellent cattle station. With the exception of the narrow
gorge through which the main creek passes to join the Creek of Palms
[Mr. Arrowsmith is of opinion that such a junction is improbable, if
the author is alluding to the creek, called Palm Tree Creek, which he