finest I have seen for collecting and retaining water; and the only
question as to a permanent supply of that essential liquid is,
whether this part of the country is subject to long-continued
droughts; for the waterholes that we have met with are not large
enough to last for any great length of time, in the event of the
country being stocked. At ten miles from Teltawongee, we came to
the Wonominta--a creek having all the characteristics of
water-courses that take their rise in hills of schistoze formation.
At first, the numberless small waterholes, without the trace of a
creek connecting them, then the deep-cut narrow channel, with every
here and there a fine waterhole. The banks of the creek are clothed
with high grass and marshmallows. The latter grow to an immense
size on nearly all the creeks out here.

The Wonominta Ranges are high, bare-looking hills, lying to the
eastward of the creek; the highest peaks must be between two and
three thousand feet above the sea. The blacks say that there is no
water in them--an assertion that I can scarcely credit. They say,
however, that there is a fine creek, with permanent water, to the
east of the ranges, flowing northwards. At the point of the
Wonominta Creek where we camped there is a continuous waterhole of
more than a mile long, which, they say, is never dry. It is from
fifteen to twenty feet broad, and averages about five feet in
depth, as near as I could ascertain. From this point, Camp 43, the
creek turns to the north-west and around to north, where it enters
a swamp, named Wannoggin; it must be the same that Sturt crossed in
coming across from Evelyn Plains. In going over to Wannoggin, a
distance of fourteen miles, I found the plains everywhere
intersected by small creeks, most of them containing water, which
was sheltered from the sun by the overhanging branches of drooping