othing will stay the progress of
improvement in a colony which has received such an impulse as the
province of South Australia. As men retain their peculiarities, so, I
believe, do communities; and where a desirable object is to be gained, I
shall be mistaken if it is lost from a want of spirit in that colony.
Purposing, however, to devote a few pages to the more particular notice
of the state of South Australia, and the prospects it holds out to those
who may desire to seek in other lands more comforts and a better fortune
than they could command in their native country, I shall not here make
any further observation.

The morning, which had been so cold, gradually became more genial as the
sun rose above us, and both Mr. Eyre and myself forgot that we had so
lately been shivering, under the influence of the more agreeable
temperature which then prevailed.

As we turned the Great Bend of the Murray, and pursued an easterly
course, we rode along the base of some low hills of tertiary fossil
formation, the summits of which form the table land of the interior. We
were on an upper flat, and consequently considerably above the level of
the water as it then was. In riding along, Tenbury pointed out a line of
rubbish and sticks, such as is left to mark the line of any inundation,
and he told us, that, when he was a boy, he recollected the floods having
risen so high in the valley as to wash the foot of these hills. He
stated, that there had been no previous warning; that the weather was
beautifully fine, and that no rain had fallen; and he added that the
natives were ignorant whence the water came, but that it came from a long
way off. According to Tenbury's account, the river must have been fully
five and twenty feet higher than it usually rises; and judging from his
age, this occurrence might have taken place some twenty years before. As
we proceed up the Darling, we shall see a clue to this phenomenon. But
why, it may be asked, do not such floods more frequently occur? Is it
that the climate is drier than it once was, and that the rains are less
frequent? There are vestiges of floods over every part of the continent;
but the decay of debris and other rubbish is so slow, that one cannot
safely calculate how long it may have been deposited where they are so
universally to be found.

After passing the Great Bend, as I have already stated, we turned to the
eastward and overtook Mr. Poole at noon, not more than eight miles
di