ance. By
the time Mr. Hume came up, they had in some measure recovered their
presence of mind, but availed themselves of the first favourable moment
to leave us. I was particular in not imposing any restraint on these
men, in consequence of which they afterwards mustered sufficient
resolution to visit us in our camp. We now judged that we were about
ten miles from the cataract, and that, according to the accounts of the
stockman, we could not be very distant from the lake he had mentioned.
NATIVE BURIAL PLACE.
As I was unwilling to pass any important feature of the country without
enquiry or examination, I requested Mr. Hume to interrogate the
strangers on the subject. They stated that they belonged to the lake
tribe, that the lake was a short day's journey to the eastward, and
that they would guide us to it if we wished. The matter was accordingly
arranged. They left us at dusk, but returned to the camp at the
earliest dawn; when we once more crossed the river, and, after
traversing a very level country for about nine miles, arrived at our
destination. We passed over the dried beds of lagoons, and through
coppices of cypresses and acacia pendula, or open forest, but did not
observe any of the barren stony ridges so common to the N.E. About a
mile, or a mile and a half, from the lake we examined a solitary grave
that had recently been constructed. It consisted of an oblong mound,
with three semicircular seats. A walk encompassed the whole, from which
three others branched off for a few yards only, into the forest.
Several cypresses, overhanging the grave, were fancifully carved on the
inner side, and on one the shape of a heart was deeply engraved.
BUDDAH LAKE.
We were sadly disappointed in the appearance of the lake, which the
natives call the Buddah. It is a serpentine sheet of fresh water, of
rather more than a mile in length, and from three to four hundred yards
in breadth. Its depth was four fathoms; but it seemed as if it were now
five or six feet below the ordinary level. No stream either runs into
it or flows from it; yet it abounds in fish; from which circumstance I
should imagine that it originally owed its supply to the river during
some extensive inundation. Notwithstanding that we had crossed some
rich tracts of land in our way to it, the neighbourhood of the lake was
by no means fertile. The trees around it were in rapid decay, and the
little vegetation to be seen appeared to derive but little adva
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