to the north-east, which direction brought me, after about
three miles travelling through open forest, to Mr. Hodgson's creek, at
which John Murphy and Caleb had been lost. The creek here consists of a
close chain of fine rocky water-holes; the rock is principally clay,
resembling very much a decomposed igneous rock, but full of nodules and
veins of iron-stone. I now turned to the northward, and encamped at the
upper part of the creek. To-day I took my old course to the north-west,
and passed a scrubby Ironbark forest, and flat openly-timbered forest
land. I came again, however, to a Bricklow scrub, which I skirted, and
after having crossed a very dense scrubby Ironbark forest, came to a
chain of rushy water-holes, with the fall of the waters to the
north-east. The whole drainage of a north-easterly basin, seems to have
its outlet, through Charley's Creek, into the Condamine.

On the banks of Hodgson's Creek, grows a species of Dampiera, with many
blue flowers, which deserves the name of "D. floribunda;" here also were
Leptospermum; Persoonia with lanceolate pubescent leaf; Jacksonia
(Dogwood); the cypress-pine with a light amber-coloured resin (Charley
brought me fine claret-coloured resin, and I should not be surprised to
find that it belongs to a different species of Callitris); an Acacia with
glaucous lanceolate one-inch-long phyllodia; and a Daviesia; another
Acacia with glaucous bipinnate leaves; a white Scaevola, Anthericum, and
a little Sida, with very showy blossoms. Spotted-gum and Ironbark formed
the forest; farther on, flooded-gum.

Pigeons, mutton-birds (Struthidia), are frequent, and provided us with
several messes; iguanas are considered great delicacies; several black
kangaroos were scen to day.

The weather very fine, but hot; the wind westerly; thermometer at sunset
74 degrees (84 degrees in the water.)

Oct. 23.--At the commencement of last night, westerly winds, the sky
clear; at the setting of the moon (about 3 o'clock a.m.), the wind
changed to the north-east; scuddy clouds passing rapidly from that
quarter; at sunrise it clears a little, but the whole morning cloudy, and
fine travelling weather.

We travelled in a north-westerly direction, through a Casuarina thicket,
but soon entered again into fine open Ironbark forest, with occasionally
closer underwood; leaving a Bricklow scrub to our right, we came to a dry
creek with a deep channel; which I called "Acacia Creek," from the
abundance of s