33 degrees, and under the meridian of 150 degrees east, would have a course of 2045 statute miles throughout, while the elevation of its source, being 3500 feet above the level of the sea as shown by the barometer, would give its waters an average descent of twenty inches to the mile, supposing the bed of the river to be an inclined plane.
"The Gwydir originating in elevated land, lying in 31 degrees south, and long.

151 degrees east, at a mean height of 3000 feet, would have to flow 2020 miles, its elevated sources giving to each a mean fall of seventeen inches.
"Dumaresq's river falling 2970 feet from granite mountains, in 28 1/4 degrees under the meridian of 152 degrees, would have to pursue its course for 2969 miles, its average fall being eighteen inches to a mile." As I have never been upon the banks either of the Gwydir or the Dumaresq, I cannot speak of those two rivers; but in estimating the sources of the Macquarie at 3500 feet above the level of the sea, Mr.Cunningham has lost sight of, or overlooked the fact, that the fall of its bed in the first two hundred miles, is more than 2800 feet, since the cataract, which is midway between Wellington Valley and the marshes, was ascertained by barometrical admeasurement, to be 680 feet only above the ocean.

The country, therefore, through which the Macquarie would have to flow during the remainder of its course of 1700 miles, in order to gain the N.W.coast, would not be a gradually inclined plain, but for the most part a dead level, and the fact of its failure is a sufficient proof in itself how short the course of a river so circumstanced must necessarily be.
MR.

OXLEY'S OPINIONS.
Having conversed frequently with Mr.Oxley on the subject of his expeditions, I went into the interior prepossessed in favour of his opinions, nor do I think he could have drawn any other conclusion than that which he did, from his experience of the terminations of the rivers whose courses he explored.

Had Mr.Oxley advanced forty, or even thirty miles, farther than he did, to the westward of Mount Harris; nay, had he proceeded eight miles in the above direction beyond the actual spot from which he turned back, he would have formed other and very different opinions of the probable character of the distant interior.