to some
clear water. But this was inaccessible, even to my horse, nor could I
take him further down that wildly broken gully; therefore we backed out,
and ascended as we could. Then riding southward in search of one more
accessible, I at length, descended into a grassy valley, which ran
northwest, and gave promise of something still better. I could not follow
it then without provisions, having none with me, and I therefore hastened
back to the camp, resolved to take with me men and provisions sufficient
to enable me to explore this further. In the scrub I passed through on my
way back, I found various very remarkable shrubs new and strange to me.
One grew on a large stalk, from which leaves radiated without other or
any branches. These leaves, hanging gracefully around the stem, gave to
this shrub the resemblance of the plume of a staff-officer. The outer
side of each leaf was dark and shining, the inner white and woolly.
Rarely these tall stems separated into two. Other branches there were
none. Some very beautiful new acacias also grew there. One, in
particular, with leaves exactly similar to those of the silver-leaved
ironbark, was very remarkable, a broad rough-leaved FICUS, with opposite
leaves not unlike those of the New Holland Upas. The white-flowered lead-
wort (PLUMBAGO ZEYLANICA) and the TRIODIA PUNGENS were abundant among the
grasses. A downy Dodonaea, with triangular leaves, was producing its
small flowers[*], and a scrubby bush with hard narrow leaves and globular
fruit the size of a rifle-ball, proved to be a new CAPPARIS.[**]
Thermometer, at daybreak, 35 deg.; at 9 P.M., 38 deg..

[* D. TRIANGULARIS (Lindl. MS.); molliter pubescens, foliis
obtriangularibus tridentatis, pedunculis masculis axillaribus
subsolitariis.]

[** C. LORANTHIFOLIA (Lindl. MS.) ramosa, inermis, ramulis tomentosis,
foliis lineari-oblongis obtusis coriaceis glabris sesqui-pollicaribus
aveniis, pedunculis solitariis axillaribus tomentosis foliis brevioribus,
stipite duplo longiore, fructu sphaerico tuberculato glabro.]

2D JULY.--Returning with two men and Yuranigh to the valley where I had
been yesterday, I followed it downwards, and soon found that it widened
very much, and contained large dry ponds, with the traces of a deep
current of water at some seasons. At length, the rocky precipices seemed
to recede, and formed occasionally bold headlands of most picturesque
outline. Two, that towered above the woods before us, resembled