It is impossible for me to describe the effect of so instantaneous a
change of circumstances upon us. The boats were allowed to drift along
at pleasure, and such was the force with which we had been shot out of
the Morumbidgee, that we were carried nearly to the bank opposite its
embouchure, whilst we continued to gaze in silent astonishment on the
capacious channel we had entered; and when we looked for that by which
we had been led into it, we could hardly believe that the insignificant
gap that presented itself to us was, indeed, the termination of the
beautiful and noble stream, whose course we had thus successfully
followed. I can only compare the relief we experienced to that which
the seaman feels on weathering the rock upon which he expected his
vessel would have struck--to the calm which succeeds moments of
feverish anxiety, when the dread of danger is succeeded by the
certainty of escape.

To myself personally, the discovery of this river was a circumstance of
a particularly gratifying nature, since it not only confirmed the
justness of my opinion as to the ultimate fate of the Morumbidgee, and
bore me out in the apparently rash and hasty step I had taken at the
depot, but assured me of ultimate success in the duty I had to perform.
We had got on the high road, as it were, either to the south coast, or
to some important outlet; and the appearance of the river itself was
such as to justify our most sanguine expectations. I could not doubt
its being the great channel of the streams from the S.E. angle of the
island. Mr. Hume had mentioned to me that he crossed three very
considerable streams, when employed with Mr. Hovell in 1823 in
penetrating towards Port Phillips, to which the names of the Goulburn,
the Hume, and the Ovens, had been given; and as I was 300 miles from
the track these gentlemen had pursued, I considered it more than
probable that those rivers must already have formed a junction above
me, more especially when I reflected that the convexity of the
mountains to the S.E. would necessarily direct the waters falling
inwards from them to a common centre.

We entered the new river at right angles, and, as I have remarked, at
the point of junction the channel of the Morumbidgee had narrowed so as
to bear all the appearance of an ordinary creek. In breadth it did not
exceed fifty feet, and if, instead of having passed down it, I had been
making my way up the principal streams, I should little have dr