stones; but here, where there are no stones, the
calcined clay seems to answer the same purpose, and becomes better or
harder the more it is used. Hence the accumulation of heaps resembling
small hills.* Some of them were so very ancient as to be surrounded by
circles of lofty trees; others, long abandoned, were half worn away by
the river which, in the course of ages, had so far changed its bed that
the burnt ashes reached out to mid-channel; others, now very remote from
the river, had large trees growing out of them.

(*Footnote. And Jacob said unto his brethren, Gather stones: and they
took stones, and made a heap, and they did eat there upon the heap.
Genesis 31:46. "Thevenot describes the way of roasting a sheep, practised
by the Armenians, by which also the use of smoky wood is avoided; for
having flayed it, they cover it again with the skin, and put it into an
oven upon the quick coals, covering it also with a good many of the same
coals, that it may have fire under and over to roast it well on all
sides; and the skin keeps it from being burnt." Harmer. Whoever has seen
the Australian natives cook a kangaroo must recognise in this description
the very same process.)

HIGH REEDS ON THE RIVERBANK.

I saw the first of these heaps when near the end of the last day's
journey along the Lachlan, where this river partook of the reedy
character of the Murrumbidgee. I understood that the balyan or
bulrush-root which is the chief food of the natives there is prepared in
those kilns when a family or tribe are together. I ascertained the name
of the place to be Weyeba; its latitude is 34 degrees 21 minutes 34
seconds South; longitude 143 degrees 56 minutes 27 seconds East.

May 16.

We commenced our journey down the Murrumbidgee. Our route passed
occasionally through reeds as we cut off the bends of the river; but they
formed no serious impediment although they stood so high that we
occasionally experienced some difficulty in following each other through
them. Having found, after surveying the river a few miles down, that the
general course was about south-west, as I had also found it to be above
our camp, I followed that direction as a general line of route, leaving
the river at length at some distance to the left. The country looked
well, lofty yarra trees and luxuriant grass giving it the appearance of
fine forest land; but most of these trees bore marks of inundation, and
the water appeared to have reached several fe