their reach, and when wet seasons do occur the cattle of squatters must
be very much at the mercy of the savages. The tribes from the Darling are
extremely hostile, even to the more peaceably disposed hilltribes near
the colony, and several stations have already been abandoned in
consequence of the outrages of the aborigines from the Darling and
Lachlan. Nothing is so likely to increase these evils as the precarious
or temporary occupation of such a country. The supply of water must
continue uncertain so long as there is no inducement from actual
possession to form dams, and by means of art to secure the full benefit
of the natural supply. Hence it is that half a million of acres, covered
with the finest grass, have been abandoned, and even savages smile at the
want of generalship by which they have been allowed to burn the white
man's dairy station and stockyards on the banks of the Bogan. The
establishment of a police station near the junction of the Bogan with the
Darling, or the formation of an inland township about Fort Bourke, had
been sufficient to have secured the stations along the Bogan and
Macquarie, and to have protected the Bogan natives as well as our own
countrymen from frequent robbery, murder, and insult. Such are the
results where SQUATTING has been permitted to supersede settling. With
possession, deficiency of water in dry seasons had been remedied, and no
such debateable land had remained on the borders of a British colony.

The part of the Bogan where least water can be found, has always been
that between our present camp and Mudà, a very large lagoon about 50
miles lower down. I found by the barometer that there is a fall of 206
feet in that distance of 50 miles; whereas the fall in the bed of the
Bogan is only 50 feet between Mudà and New Year's Range, in a distance of
upwards of 100 miles. The general course of the Bogan changes at Mudà
from N.W. to north, the former being nearly in the direction of the
general declination of the country, the latter rather across it, of which