All of them were handsome and well-made men, though short in stature, and their lower extremities bore some proportion to their busts.
For the first time this day we observed a ferruginous sandstone in the bed of the Darling, and saw it cropping out from under the sand hills on the western extremity of the flats.
Shortly after leaving the natives we arrived at a small plain, where they could only just have killed a kangaroo that was lying on the ground partly prepared for cooking.

On seeing it I ordered the dogs to be tied up, and left it untouched.

Indeed if I had been fortunate enough to kill a kangaroo at this place, I would have given it to these poor people.
Three of them, who afterwards came to our camp, mentioned the circumstance, and seemed to be sensible of our feelings towards them.
There can be no doubt but that the Australian aboriginal is strongly susceptible of kindness, as has been abundantly proved to me, and to the influence of such feeling I doubtlessly owe my life; for if I had treated the natives harshly, and had thrown myself into their power afterwards, as under a kind but firm system I have ever done without the slightest apprehension, they would most assuredly have slain me; and when I assure the reader that I have traversed the country in every direction, meeting numerous tribes of natives, with two men only, and with horses so jaded that it would have been impossible to have escaped, he will believe that I speak my real sentiments.

Equally so the old native, (to whom the net we discovered in the hollow of a tree where we first struck the Darling belonged), evinced the greatest astonishment and gratification, when he found that his treasure had been untouched by us.
The flats of the Darling are certainly of great extent, but their verdure reached no farther than the immediate precincts of the river at this part of its course.

Beyond its immediate neighbourhood they are perfectly bare, but lightly wooded, having low and useless box-trees (the Gobero of Sir Thomas Mitchell), growing on them.