The river continued to maintain its character and appearance, its lofty banks, and its long still reaches: while, however, the blue-gum trees upon its banks were of magnificent size, the soil had but little vegetation upon it, although an alluvial deposit.
We passed over vast spaces covered with the polygonum junceum, that bore all the appearance of the flooded tracks in the neighbourhood of the marshes, and on which the travelling was equally distressing to the animals.

Indeed, it had been sufficiently evident to us that the waters of this river were not always confined to its channel, capacious as it was, but that they inundated a belt of barren land, that varied in width from a quarter of a mile to a mile, when they were checked by an outer embankment that prevented them from spreading generally over the country, and upon the neighbouring plains.

At our halting place, the cattle drank sparingly of the water, but it acted as a violent purgative both on them and the men who partook of it.
NATIVE VILLAGE.
On the 5th, the river led us to the southward and westward.

Early in the day, we passed a group of seventy huts, capable of holding from twelve to fifteen men each.

They appeared to be permanent habitations, and all of them fronted the same point of the compass.