ee bread, of which I partook, leaving for payment some
spare nose rings of our bullocks. In their dillies I found the fleshy
roots of a bean, which grows in a sandy soil, and has solitary yellow
blossoms; the tuber of a vine, which has palmate leaves; a bitter potato,
probably belonging to a water-plant; a fine specimen of rock-crystal; and
a large cymbium (a sea shell), besides other trifles common to almost all
the natives we had seen. Their koolimans were very large, almost like
small boats, and were made of the inner layer of the bark of the
stringy-bark tree. There was no animal food in the camp.

The whole extent of the mountainous country passed in our two last
stages, was of porphyry, with crystals of quartz and felspar in a grey
paste; on both sides of it, the rock was granite and pegmatite; and, at
the north-west side of the gorge, I observed talc-schist in the bed of
the river.

The vegetation of the forest, and along the river, did not vary; but, on
the mountains, the silver-leaved Ironbark prevailed.

The general course of the Lynd, from my last latitude to that of the 4th
June, was north-west.

Sleeping in the open air at night, with a bright sky studded with its
stars above us, we were naturally led to observe more closely the hourly
changes of the heavens; and my companions became curious to know the
names of those brilliant constellations, with which nightly observation
had now, perhaps for the first time, made them familiar. We had reached a
latitude which allowed us not only to see the brightest stars of the
southern, but, also of the northern hemisphere, and I shall never forget
the intense pleasure I experienced, and that evinced by my companions,
when I first called them, about 4 o'clock in the morning, to see Ursa
Major. The starry heaven is one of those great features of nature, which
enter unconsciously into the composition of our souls. The absence of the
stars gives us painful longings, the nature of which we frequently do not
understand, but which we call home sickness:--and their sudden
re-appearance touches us like magic, and fills us with delight. Every new
moon also was hailed with an almost superstitious devotion, and my
Blackfellows vied with each other to discover its thin crescent, and
would be almost angry with me when I strained my duller eyes in vain to
catch a glimpse of its faint light in the brilliant sky which succeeds
the setting of the sun. The questions: where were we at