le
if we had not fortunately stumbled on another little pool of water in a
lateral creek about half way. After breakfasting here, we moved leisurely
on, and reached our destination at half-past five, p.m. Sullivan shot a
beautiful and new hawk (ELANUS SCRIPTUS, Gould), which does not appear to
extend farther south than where we here met it, although it wanders over
the whole of the north-west interior as far as we went. There were some
beautiful plants also growing in the bed of the creek; but we had
previously met with so few things that we might here be said to have
commenced our collection.

At this water-hole, "Parnari," we surprised three natives who were
strangers. They did not betray any fear, but slept at the tents and left
us the following day, as they said to bring more natives to visit us, but
we never saw anything more of them. They were hill natives, and shorter
in stature than the river tribes.

The day succeeding that of our arrival at Parnari was very peculiar, the
thermometer did not rise higher than 81 degrees, but the barometer fell
to 28.730 degrees, and the atmosphere was so light that we could hardly
breathe. I had hoped that this would have been a prelude to rain, but it
came not.

The period from the 1st to the 5th of November was employed in taking
bearings from the loftiest points of the range, both to the northward and
southward of us; in examining the creek to the south-west, and preparing
for a second excursion from the camp.

The rock formation of Curnapaga was of three different kinds. A mixture
of lime and clay, a tufaceous deposit, and an apparently recent deposit
of soapstone, containing a variety of substances, as alumina, silica,
lime, soda, magnesia, and iron. The ranges on either side of the glen
were generally varieties of gneiss and granite, in many of which feldspar
predominated, coarse ferruginous sandstone, and a siliceous rock with
mammillary hematite and hornblende. These, and a great mixture of iron
ores, composed the first or eastern line of Stanley's Barrier Range.

It will be remembered that in tracing up the creek on the occasion of our
first excursion from Cawndilla, that Topar had persuaded me, on gaining
the head of the glen to go to the north, on the faith of a promise that
he would take us to a place where there was an abundance of water, and
that in requital he took us to a shallow, slimy pool, the water of which
was unfit to drink. Mr. Browne and I now went i