318 HALT THE PARTY 



of the vernal tints on its borders we went to taste 

 the waters. On the same refreshing errand was a 

 luckless beautiful slate-coloured egret, which Mr. 

 Gore shot. Holding our west course we made the 

 river at the end of another mile. Its size was re- 

 duced to a mere rivulet; being scarcely fifteen yards 

 wide, with a depth of five feet. Yet it had greater 

 velocity than we had before observed, running at 

 the rate of a mile an hour, a clear babbling brook, 

 over which, acacias and drooping gums formed a 

 leafy tunnel ; its course was still from the south. 



Whilst the rest of the party halted I proceeded, 

 with the freshest man,* in a southerly direction ; 

 urged on by what was, perhaps, now the unjustifiable 

 hope of discovering some distant point rising above 

 the far horizon as a definite result and reward of my 

 exploration. It seemed, however, almost impossible 

 that this same wearisome monotonv could lono^ con- 

 tinue ; and I experienced much of that painful de- 

 pressing excitement which is created by a series of 

 similar impressions when we are longing for variety. 



We soon gained almost another two miles, when I 

 availed myself of the opportunity to satisfy a second 

 time my ambition of outstripping my companions in 

 approaching towards that land of mystery, Central 

 Australia. Desiring Brown to make the river 



* A marine, of the name of John Brown, possessing great 

 powers of endurance. He died in 1845, in a situation I got him 

 under the Trinity House, on his obtaining a pension for long 

 servitude. 



