and for four or five days held nearly the same direction; in the course
of which we crossed both our tracks on the excursions we had made,
which had intersected each other in a dense oak brush; thus renewing
the few doubts, or rather the doubt we had as to the fate of the
Macquarie, whose course we had been sent to trace. Indeed, had I not
felt convinced that that river had ceased, I should not have moved
westward without further examination, but we had passed through a very
narrow part of the marshes, and round the greater part of them, and had
not seen any hollow that could by any possible exaggeration be
construed into or mistaken for the channel of a river.

It appears, then, that the Macquarie, flowing as it does for so many
miles, through a bed, and not a declining country, and having little
water in it, except in times of flood, loses its impetus long ere it
reaches the formidable barrier that opposes its progress northwards;
the soil in which the reeds grow being a stiff clay. Its waters
consequently spread, until a slight declivity giving them fresh
impulse, they form a channel again, but soon gaining a level, they lose
their force and their motion together, and spread not only over the
second great marsh, but over a vast extent of the surrounding country,
the breadth of ground thus subject to inundation being more than twenty
miles, and its length considerably greater; around this space there is
a gentle rise which confines the waters, while small hollows in various
directions lead them out of the marshes over the adjacent plains, on
which they eventually subside. On my return from the interior, I
examined those parts round which I had not been, with particular
attention, partly in company with Mr. Hume, and this statement was
confirmed by what we saw. Thus, at a distance of about twenty-five
miles from Mount Foster to the N.N.W. the river Macquarie ceases to
exist, in any shape as a river, and at a distance of between fifty and
sixty, the marshes terminate, though the country subject to inundation
from the river is of a very considerable extent, as shown by the
withered bulrushes, wet reeds, and shells, that are scattered over its
surface.

Having executed the first part of the instructions with which I had
been honoured, I determined on pursuing a west, or north-west course
into the interior, to ascertain the nature of it, in fulfilment of the
second, but in doing this I was obliged to follow creeks, and ev