Losing much time in heading them, I ventured to descend one of the more practicable spurs, and, to my great satisfaction, my bullocks did it admirably well.

The valley into which I entered was very different from these barriers; gentle slopes, covered with open forest of silver-leaved Ironbark, and most beautifully grassed, facilitated my gradual descent to the bottom of the valley, which was broad, flat, thinly timbered with flooded-gum and apple-trees, densely covered with grass, and, in the bed of the creek which passed through it, well provided with reedy water-holes.

Before I ventured to proceed with my whole party, I determined to examine the country in advance, and therefore followed up one of the branches of the main creek, in a northerly direction.

In proceeding, the silver-leaved Ironbark forest soon ceased, and the valley became narrow and bounded by perpendicular walls of sandstone, composed of coarse grains of quartz, rising out of sandy slopes covered with Dogwood (Jacksonia) and spotted-gum.

The rock is in a state of rapid decomposition, with deep holes and caves inhabited by rock-wallabies; and with abundance of nests of wasps, and wasp-like Hymenoptera, attached to their walls, or fixed in the interstices of the loose rock.