To The Valley I Gave The Name Of Emmeline's Valley, And The Hill From Which We Corrected Our Survey With Mount Melville And Mount Cunningham, Macnamara's Hill.

The day was clear and mild, and in the course of it some new and fine plants were procured.

August 9. - The morning fine and pleasant. At half past eight we left the valley, intending still to keep our course north of east, as the most likely point on which to make the Macquarie River, from which, judging by the botanical productions of that stream, we cannot be very far.

For three or four miles the country was tolerably open and good, being clothed with luxuriant broom-grass. The cypress trees of good dimensions; but no signs of water. For the remainder of our day's journey, we passed over tracts of low barren ridges covered with brush, and iron bark trees, and open valleys; the country was of moderate elevation, but still we were not so fortunate as to find any water, although every slope was searched. After having travelled fourteen miles, during the latter part of which it rained hard, I thought it most advisable to stop, as we had just passed through a thick brush into a more open country, which would afford the horses something to eat; the rain, which still continued, relieving us from apprehension of their suffering much from want of water. As to ourselves, we had taken our now usual precaution to fill our keg, which gave us a pint each for our evening consumption, and the same quantity for breakfast the next morning.

In the course of the day the stirculia heterophylla was very abundant, and we remarked that the cypresses were those originally known as the callitris australis, and not of either of the other two species, which were common in the neighbourhood of the Lachlan. The brushes and scrubs were the only places that afforded any thing to the researches of the botanists; the open lands being covered with grass, and the shrubs being of acacias whose species had been already often seen on this side of the Blue Mountain range.

August 10. - The morning proved clear and mild, and at nine we again proceeded; as it was impossible to remain in a place that did not afford us any water, and not good grass.

The country continued open forest land for about three miles, the cypress and the bastard box being the prevailing timber; of the former many were useful trees. We seemed neither ascending nor descending, but travelling on somewhat of an elevated plain. The broom-grass was very luxuriant, being four or five feet high; the soil, as before, a light, red, sandy loam. To this open tract succeeded three miles of barren brush land, covered with clumps of small cypresses, iron barks, and acacias; the slightest elevation or ascent was always stony, and in one or two places large masses of granite rock were observed. We have hitherto seen no other signs of this being an inhabited country than the marks usually made by the natives in ascending the trees, and none of these were very recent.

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