tis. November 1838: This Ropera has grown in the
gardens of the Horticultural Society at Chiswick and proves a pretty new
annual flower.)

IMPROVED APPEARANCE OF THE RIVER.

The banks of the river bore here a very different aspect from any parts
which we had seen above; and I supposed that we were at length
approaching its junction with the Murrumbidgee. The bed was broader but
not so deep, and contained abundance of water at every turning. Ducks,
pigeons, cockatoos and parrots were numerous; and we had certainly
reached a better country than any we had yet traversed.

INHABITED TOMB.

On a corner of the plain, just as we approached the land of reedy
hollows, I perceived at some distance a large, lonely hut of peculiar
construction, and I accordingly rode to examine it. On approaching it I
observed that it was closed on every side, the materials consisting of
poles and large sheets of bark, and that it stood in the centre of a plot
of bare earth of considerable extent, but enclosed by three small ridges,
the surface within the area having been made very level and smooth. I had
little doubt that this was a tomb but, on looking through a crevice, I
perceived that the floor was covered with a bed of rushes which had been
recently occupied. On removing a piece of bark and lifting the rushes, I
ascertained, on thrusting my sabre into the hollow loose earth under
them, that this bed covered a grave.

Tommy Came-first, who was with me, pronounced this to be the work of a
white man; but by the time I had finished a sketch of it The Widow had
hailed him from the woods and told him that it was a grave, after which I
could not prevail on him to approach the spot. I carefully replaced the
bark, anxious that no disturbance of the repose of the dead should
accompany the prints of the white man's feet. I afterwards learnt from
The Widow that the rushes within that solitary tomb were actually the
nightly bed of some near relative or friend of the deceased (probably a
brother) and that the body was thus watched and attended in the grave
through the process of corruption or, as Piper interpreted her account,
until no flesh remains on the bones; "and then he yan (i.e. goes) away!"
No fire, the constant concomitant of places of shelter, had ever been
made within this abode alike of the living and the dead, although remains
of several recent fires appeared on the heath outside.

DEAD TREES AMONG THE REEDS.

In the afternoon we came