ue this course; not that
the nature of the country, or its own appearance in any manner
indicated that it would become navigable, or was even permanent;
but I was unwilling that the smallest doubt should remain of any
navigable waters falling westward into the sca, between the
limits pointed out in my instructions.

I continued along the banks of the stream until the 8th of
July, it having taken during this period a westerly direction,
and passing through a perfectly level country, barren in the
extreme, and being evidently at periods entirely under water. To
this point it had been gradually diminishing, and spreading its
waters over stagnated lagoons and morasses, without receiving any
stream that we knew of during the whole extent of its course. The
banks were not more than three feet high, and the marks of flood
in the shrubs and bushes, shewed that at times it rose between
two and three feet higher, causing the whole country to become a
marsh, and altogether uninhabitable.

Further progress westward, had it been possible, was now
useless, as there was neither hill nor rising ground of any kind
within the compass of our view, which was only bounded by the
horizon in every quarter, entirely devoid of timber except a few
diminutive gums on the very edge of the stream, might be so
termed. The water in the bed of the lagoon, as it might now be
properly denominated, was stagnant; its breadth about twenty
feet, and the heads of grass growing in it, shewed it to be about
three feet deep.

This originally unlooked for and truly singular termination of
a river, which we had anxiously hoped and reasonably expected
would have led to a far different conclusion, filled us with the
most painful sensations. We were full five hundred miles west of
Sydney, and nearly in its latitude; and it had taken us ten weeks
of unremitted exertion to proceed so far. The nearest part of the
coast about Cape Bernouilli, had it been accessible, was distant
about a hundred and fifty miles. We had demonstrated beyond the
shadow of a doubt, that no river whatever could fall into the
sea, between Cape Otway and Spencer's Gulph; at least none
deriving their waters from the eastern coast, and that the
country south of the parallel of 34 degrees, and west of the
meridian of 147 degrees 30' East, was uninhabitable and useless
for all the purposes of civilized man.

It now became my duty to make our remaining resources as
extensively useful to the c