Page:Diary of ten years.djvu/93

 75 acacias; but neither mahogany nor gum trees. Saw two emus, many kangaroos, and shot a brace of cockatoos, which made no insignificant appearance at our evening meal; and we turned into our hammocks at nine o'clock.

24th.—Up at day-break, and followed the course of a considerable stream—probably the Avon: determined not to lose sight of it, and passed a waterfall, which rolled six feet over a granite rock, through a falling ground, with buttercups on its surface, and the acacia, bearing flowers like the laburnum. There are many bare downs visible from a hill near this, with green patches here and there.

25th.—Found that one of our horses had broken loose in the night, and had some trouble and difficulty in catching him. Passed rapidly over a bare tract, with here and there a white gum tree creeping like a ghost through the vistas. Found the running water in the river to be fresh; but that standing in the pools, brackish. Followed the river, looking for its connexion with the fresh water lake; but could not find it: at length discovered the head of a salt water lake. It appears that the stream which we had followed for forty miles had ceased to flow, and become absorbed by the earth: this is one of the puzzles of the country.

A river runs fresh to a certain point, where it terminates; and if you trace its bed for one hundred yards, you find it occupied by a salt water lake, without any apparent outlet: some miles further down we found a long and deep lake in the reach of the river quite fresh again!

This day we had the last of our rice with a loin of pork, washed down with a glass of spiced grog; the only new delicacy we could command.

26th.—Our provisions being almost gone, we breakfasted on the dust of biscuit, soaked in tea; which was a slender preparation for the ensuing fatigue of following the river's course for eight or nine miles to the spot where it disappears above the salt water lake. We contrived, however, to make