ny break, and waved like gloomy streamers over its
turbid waters; while the trees stood leafless and sapless in the midst
of them. Wherever we landed, the same view presented itself--a waving
expanse of reeds, and a country as flat as it is possible to imagine
one. The eye could seldom penetrate beyond three quarters of a mile,
and the labour of walking through the reeds was immense; but within our
observation all was green and cheerless. The morning had been extremely
cold, with a thick haze at E.S.E. About 2 p.m. it came on to rain
heavily, so that we did not stir after that hour.

CONTRACTION OF THE CHANNEL.

I had remarked that the Morumbidgee was not, from the depot downwards,
so broad or so fine a river as it certainly is at the foot of the
mountain ranges, where it gains the level country. The observations of
the last two days had impressed upon my mind an idea that it was
rapidly falling off, and I began to dread that it would finally
terminate in one of those fatal marshes in which the Macquarie and the
Lachlan exhaust themselves. My hope of a more favourable issue was
considerably damped by the general appearance of the surrounding
country; and from the circumstance of our not having as yet passed a
single tributary. As we proceeded down the river, its channel gradually
contracted, and immense trees that had been swept down it by floods,
rendered the navigation dangerous and intricate. Its waters became so
turbid, that it was impossible to see objects in it, notwithstanding
the utmost diligence on the part of the men.

About noon, we fell in with a large tribe of natives, but had great
difficulty in bringing them to visit us. If they had HEARD of white
men, we were evidently the first they had ever SEEN. They approached us
in the most cautious manner, and were unable to subdue their fears as
long as they remained with us. Collectively, these people could not
have amounted to less than one hundred and twenty in number.

ANOTHER ACCIDENT.

As we pushed off from the bank, after having stayed with them about
half an hour, the whaleboat struck with such violence on a sunken log,
that she immediately leaked on her starboard side. Fortunately she was
going slowly at the time, or she would most probably have received some
more serious injury. One of the men was employed during the remainder
of the afternoon in bailing her out, and we stopped sooner than we
should otherwise have done, in order to ascertain the ext