He gave his information in a frank and manly way, without the least embarrassment, and when the party passed, he stepped back to avoid the animals, without the smallest confusion.

I am sure he was a very brave man; and I left him with the most favourable impressions, and not without hope that he would follow us.
From a more open forest, we entered a dense scrub, the soil in which was of a bright-red colour and extremely sandy, and the timber of various kinds.

A leafless species of stenochylus aphylta, which, from the resemblance, I at first thought one of the polygonum tribe, was very abundant in the open spaces, and the young cypresses were occasionally so close as to turn us from the direction in which we had been moving.

In the scrub we crossed Mr.Hume's tract, and, from the appearance of the ground, I was led to believe mine could not be very distant.
FATE OF THE MACQUARIE.
We struck upon a creek late in the afternoon, at which we stopped; New Year's Range bearing nearly due west at about four miles' distance.

Had we struck upon my track, the question about which we were so anxious would still have been undecided; but the circumstance of our having crossed Mr.
Hume's, which, from its direction, could not be mistaken, convinced me of the fate of the Macquarie, and I felt assured that, whatever channels it might have for the distribution of its waters, to the north of our line of route, the equality of surface of the interior would never permit it again to form a river; and that it only required an examination of the lower parts of the marshes to confirm the theory of the ultimate evaporation and absorption of its waters, instead of their contributing to the permanence of an inland sea, as Mr.Oxley had supposed.
NEW YEAR'S RANGE.
On the 17th of January we encamped under New Year's Range, which is the first elevation in the interior of Eastern Australia to the westward of Mount Harris.