It was not, as he seems to have conjectured, to any point to which I had previously been, but to an intermediate one.

It is very true that if I had contemplated pushing up the Darling to Fort Bourke, the distance would have been 600 miles, and that, too, in a direction contrary to the one in which I was instructed to proceed; but to Laidley's Ponds, in lat.

32 degrees 26 minutes 0 seconds S.and long.

142 degrees 30 minutes W., (the point to which I proposed to go) the distance would have been a little more than 300 miles.

It was from this point that Sir Thomas Mitchell retreated after his rupture with the natives in 1836; because, as he himself informs us, he just then ascertained that a small stream joined the Darling from the westward a little below his camp, and he likewise saw hills in the same direction.
In consequence of the inhospitable character of the country to the north, I had turned my attention to the above locality, and had been assured by the natives, both of the Murray and the Darling, that the Williorara (Laidley's Ponds) was a hill stream, that it came far from the N.W., that it had large fish in it, and that its banks were grassy.