rom the west, north-west, round to the north,
was either a complete marsh or lay under water."

The country to the south and south-west appearing more elevated. Oxley
determined to return to the place where the branches separated, and to
try his fortune on the other one. This, after a while, proved as
unsatisfactory as the one they had abandoned. Bitterly disappointed,
Oxley altered his plans entirely. He resolved to cease trying to follow
the river through this water-logged country, and determined to strike out
on a direct course to the south coast in the neighbourhood of Cape
Northumberland. In this way he hoped to cross any river that these dreary
marshes and swamps gave birth to, and that found an outlet into the
Southern Ocean, between Spencer's Gulf and Cape Otway.

This resolve was at once carried out. The boats were hauled up and
secured together; all unnecessary articles were abandoned to suit the
reduced means of transit; and at nine o'clock on May 18th they said
farewell to this weary river and started to encounter fresh troubles
under another guise. Instead of travelling in a superfluity of water they
now found themselves straitened by drought, and the work began to tell
upon the horses. Scrub, too, that besetting hindrance of so many
Australian explorers, began to impede their onward path. Eucalyptus brush
overrun with creepers and prickly acacia bushes united to bar the way,
and when, after much toil and suffering, they at last reached the point
of a range, which Oxley named the Peel Range, the leader had reluctantly
again to change his mind and to abandon the idea of making south-west to
the coast. Sick at heart of this sequence of disastrous happenings, he
confided his feeling of sorrow to his journal.

"June 4th. Weather as usual fine and clear, which is the greatest comfort
we enjoy in these deserts abandoned by every living creature capable of
getting out of them. I was obliged to send back to our former
halting-place for water, a distance of near eight miles; this is terrible
for the horses, who are in general extremely reduced; but two in
particular cannot, I think, endure this miserable existence much longer.

"At five o'clock two of the men whom I had sent to explore the country to
the south-west and see if any water could be found, returned after
proceeding six or seven miles; they found it impossible to go any farther
in that direction, or even south, from the thick bushes that intersected
th