seemed, by their laughing, to advert to
it as a good joke, and we therefore concluded that the poor fellow had
recovered. They asked for nothing, and on retiring made signs that they
were going towards the hills, or westward. We travelled towards our
former camp of May 14, but the distance being sixteen miles it was too
much for our weak animals. We halted therefore four miles short of it;
and though we turned a mile off the route to the eastward in search of
the Bogan we did not find it until after we had encamped, and then at
nearly a mile further to the eastward still.

ANOTHER MAN OF THE PARTY TAKEN ILL.

Another man of the party, Johnston, who was rather aged, began to show
symptoms of the black scurvy, which made him walk lame. This might be
partly attributed to the rancidity of the salt pork rather than the
saltness, as it had been in a great measure spoiled by having been taken
out of the proper barrels and put without brine into the water casks
before I joined the party. The two men now afflicted with scurvy were
precisely those who ate this pork most voraciously; and consequently its
effect soonest became apparent upon them.

Acacia pendula. BEAUTY OF THE SCENERY.

August 23.

The weather again quite serene. We continued our march and, passing our
former camp of the 14th, reached that of May 13 by two P.M. The ponds in
which we had before found water were now dried up; but we fortunately
discovered others a little distance higher. At two miles onward from the
camp of May 14 we saw bushes of Acacia pendula for the first time since
we had previously passed that place. The locality of that beautiful shrub
is very peculiar, being always near but never within, the limits of
inundations. Never far from hills yet never upon them. These bushes,
blended with a variety of other acacias and crowned here and there with
casuarinae, form very picturesque groups, especially when relieved with
much open ground. Indeed the beauty of the sylvan scenery on the lower
Bogan may be cited as an exception to the general want of pictorial
effect in the woods of New South Wales. The poverty of the foliage of the
eucalyptus, the prevailing tree, affords little of mass or shadow; and
indeed seldom has that tree, either in the trunk or branches, anything
ornamental to landscape. On these plains, where all surrounding trees and
shrubs seemed different from those of other countries, the Agrostis
virginica of Linnaeus, a grass common t