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.  Through a few gullies I succeeded in ascending a kind of table-land, covered with a low scrub, in which the vegetation about Sydney appeared in several of its most common forms.  I then descended into other valleys to the eastward, but all turned to the east and south-east; and, after a long and patient investigation, I found no opening through which we could pass with our bullocks.  Although I returned little satisfied with my ride, I had obtained much interesting information as to the geological character of this singular country.

CHAPTER III

Ruined Castle creek—­Zamia creek—­Bigge’s mountain—­allowance of flour reduced—­natives spear A horse—­Christmas ranges—­Brown’s lagoons—­thunder-storms&mdash
;­Albinia downs—­comet creek—­native camp.

Dec. 1.—­I rode to the eastward from our camp, to ascertain how far we were from the water-hole to which I had intended to conduct my party.  After having ascended the gullies, and passed the low scrub and cypress-pine thicket which surrounds them, I came into the open forest, and soon found our tracks, and the little creek for which I had steered the day before.  This creek, however, soon became a rocky gully, and joined a large creek, trending to the east and south-east.  Disheartened and fatigued, I returned to the camp, resolved upon following down the course of the Boyd to the south-west, until I should come into a more open country.  On my way back, I fell in with a new system of gullies, south of the creek I had left, and east of the creek on which our camp was, and which I had called “The Creek of the Ruined Castles,” because high sandstone rocks, fissured and broken like pillars and walls and the high gates of the ruined castles of Germany, rise from the broad sandy summits of many hills on both sides of the valley.