318 BEAUTY OF THE SCENERY. [CH. VIII. 



on retiring, made signs, that they were going towards the 

 hills, or westward. We travelled towards our former camp 

 of May 14, but the distance being sixteen miles, it was too 

 much for our weak animals. We halted therefore four miles 

 short of it ; and though we turned a mile off the route to the 

 eastward, in search of the Bogan, we did notfind it, until after 

 we had encamped, and then at nearly a mile further to the 

 eastward still. Another man of the party, Johnston, who was 

 I'ather aged, began to shew symptoms of the black scurvy, 

 which made him walk lame. This might be partly attributed 

 to the rancidity of the salt pork, rather than the saltness, as 

 it had been in a great measure spoiled by having been taken 

 out of the proper barrels, and put, without brine, into the 

 water casks, before I joined the party. The two men now 

 afflicted with scurvy, were precisely those who eat this pork 

 most voraciously; and consequently its effect soonest became 

 apparent upon them. 



Aug. 23. — The weather again quite serene. We continued 

 our march, and passing our former camp of the 14th, reached 

 that of May 13, by two p. m. The ponds, in which we had 

 before found water, were now dried up ; but we fortunately 

 discovered others a little distance higher. At two miles 

 onward from the camp of May 14, we saw bushes o^ acacia 

 pendula for the first time, since we had previously passed that 

 place. The locality of that beautiful shrub is very peculiar, 

 being always near, but never within, the limits of inundations. 

 Never far from hills, yet never upon them. These bushes, 

 blended with a variety of other acacias, and crowned here 

 and there with casuarinaj, form very picturesque groups, es- 

 pecially when relieved with much open ground. Indeed, the 

 beauty of the sylvan scenery on the lower Bogan, may be 

 cited as an exception to the general want of pictorial effect in 

 the woods of New South Wales. The poverty of tiie foliage 

 of the eucalyptus, the prevailing tree, affords little of mass or 

 shadow ; and indeed seldom has that tree, either in the trunk 

 or branches, nnytliing ornamental to landscape. On these 



