Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/361

 where the range of the spinifex is gradually narrowed.

The considerable river Leichhardt was struck on 6th May, at a point about one hundred miles from its mouth, where it was a hundred and fifty yards wide between its banks, with a stream about twenty yards in width. Some fifty miles lower down, it presented a more imposing appearance, "its bed," says McKinlay, "vast sheets of stones, and the water in it one hundred and fifty yards wide." Two miles lower down the river goes over a fall fifty or sixty feet in height, and some miles below the fall occurs a sand pit, indicating a tidal influence. Diverging to the westward, on the 13th, a branch of the Albert was met, but its waters proved to be salt, and the party returned to the Leichhardt. The Albert had, at an earlier time, been an object of attention to McKinlay, because the steamer sent round from Melbourne by the Victoria Government the year before had been instructed to lie off that river in readiness with provisions and other assistance for the use of any of the several exploring parties then traversing the country. Latterly, however, this contingent prospect is not alluded to, no doubt from the impression that the long delay in the lake district had brought the party to the Gulf at a date long subsequent to the return of the steamer, as was indeed the case.