SUCCESSFUL FISHING. 73 



in the .shade, and that all had been for a long time 

 cooped up in a small vessel, will fully explain and 

 account for the general fatigue. In a pool of the 

 river near our resting place, I caught, within an 

 hour, some dozen good-sized fish : using a bait of 

 kangaroo flesh. There were two sorts, one of the 

 shape of a trout, and ten inches long ; it had 

 a dirty orange-yellow belly, and a muddy bronze 

 back ; the lower hole of the nose had a raised mar- 

 gin. The other measured seven inches, and re- 

 sembled in shape a small fish at home, known to all 

 schoolboys as the prickle-back ; it was curiously 

 marked, having five spots nearly black on each side, 

 near the ridge of the back ; the ground around them 

 was a dark glossy brown ; the belly was a slightly 

 shining white, reaching as far up as the lower line 

 of the eye and the margin of the spots. 



While Mr. Bynoe was occupied in making 

 sketches of them, which have been transmitted to 

 Dr. Richardson, Mr Forsyth and myself ascended 

 a neiirhbourino' hillock, and traced the river in a 

 westerly direction for two miles ; it then turned 

 round to IN . N, E. : a deep narrow valley separated 

 it from the higher land to the eastward. The bed 

 of the river at this place, though partly dry, was 

 wider than we had hitherto seen it, and the trees 

 upon its banks still shewed evident signs of being 

 washed by a mountain torrent. After making a set 

 of observations for longitude, we started again at 3 

 o'clock, P.M. taking a north-west direction over a flat 



