Elsey creek.

14th July.

Resuming our journey at 8.10 a.m., steered north-east down the valley of the creek, which I named Elsey Creek, after the surgeon of the expedition.  Its course was generally to the north-east, but spreading into lagoons and swampy flats, became very tortuous and irregular.  It then changed to a very winding reach of water fifty to sixty yards wide, with low banks covered with reeds and tall melaleuca-trees, beyond which was a belt of pandanus growing on the drier ground.  Many small springs rose in the limestone rock and ran into the creek, on the banks of which large quantities of mussel-shells showed the frequent camps of the blacks.  The banks of the creek and springs were so soft and boggy that our horses could not approach the water, and we followed its banks in search of a spot where they could drink in safety, till 4.0, without success, and having camped, had to water the horses with our leather buckets.

Latitude by a2 Centauri and a Coronae Borealis 15 degrees 5 minutes 35 seconds.

Roper river.

15th July.

Leaving our camp at 7.10 a.m., steered north-east till 9.0, over level country, which appeared to be very swampy in the rainy season; altered the course to 10 degrees magnetic, and crossed a small dry watercourse which proved to be a continuation of Elsey Creek.  At 11.0 turned 60 degrees magnetic, and shortly came on the bank of a fine river with banks thirty to forty feet high, and fine reaches of water fifty to eighty yards wide; at 11.45 camped at the junction of Elsey Creek and the river, which appears to be the Roper of Dr. Leichhardt.  The fan-palm was frequently seen on the banks of Elsey Creek, where it obtained a height of fifty to eighty feet, and had a thicker stem and produced a more palatable vegetable than the species growing on the banks of the Victoria River.

Kill an emu.

16th July.

At 7.5 a.m. recommenced our journey, following down the Roper River east and north-east; about a mile below the camp the limestone rocks formed a bar, over which the river ran with a rapid current ten yards wide and two feet deep; the banks became lower and the surface of the country extremely level.  The overflows of the river had formed shallow lagoons, in which the nelumbium or gigantic water-lily was first seen.  A ridge of low sandstone hills came close to the left bank, and on the right a vast level plain, covered with high grass and reeds, extending two or three miles back.  This plain is evidently inundated during the wet season, though the soil was now dry and full of deep cracks.  The river divided into several small shallow channels full of reeds, and each with a small stream of water, the deep green of the vegetation along the course of the running water contrasting strongly with the parched vegetation of the other portions of the plain.  Clumps of melaleuca occurred