gnant marsh, or gradually
exhausting itself over extensive plains as the more northern streams do,
I was successfully borne on its broad and transparent waters, during the
progress of a former expedition, to the centre of the land in which I
have since erected my dwelling.

As I have had occasion to remark, the rise and fall of the Murray are
both gradual. It receives the first addition to its waters from the
eastward, in the month of July, and rises at the rate of an inch a day
until December, in which month it attains a height of about seventeen
feet above its lowest or winter level. As it rises it fills in succession
all its lateral creeks and lagoons, and it ultimately lays many of its
flats under water.

The natives look to this periodical overflow of their river, with as much
anxiety as did ever or now do the Egyptians, to the overflowing of the
Nile. To both they are the bountiful dispensation of a beneficent
Creator, for as the sacred stream rewards the husbandman with a double
harvest, so does the Murray replenish the exhausted reservoirs of the
poor children of the desert, with numberless fish, and resuscitates
myriads of crayfish that had laid dormant underground; without which
supply of food, and the flocks of wild fowl that at the same time cover
the creeks and lagoons, it is more than probable, the first navigators of
the Murray would not have heard a human voice along its banks; but so it
is, that in the wide field of nature, we see the hand of an over-ruling
Providence, evidences of care and protection from some unseen quarter,
which strike the mind with overwhelming conviction, that whether in the
palace or in the cottage, in the garden, or in the desert, there is an
eye upon us. Not to myself do I accord any credit in that I returned from
my wanderings to my home. Assuredly, if it had not been for other
guidance than the exercise of my own prudence, I should have perished:
and I feel satisfied the reader of these humble pages, will think as I do
when he shall have perused them.

An inspection of the accompanying chart, will shew that the course of the
Murray, as far as the 138 degrees meridian is to the W.N.W., but that, at
that point, it turns suddenly to the south, and discharges itself into
Lake Victoria, which again communicates with the ocean, in the bight of
Encounter Bay. This outlet is called the "Sea mouth of the Murray," and
immediately to the eastward of it, is the Sand Hill, now called Ba