80 
CONTRACTION OF THE CHANNEL. 
of the country through which we passed. On this day the 
favourable appearances, noticed yesterday, ceased almost as 
soon as we embarked. On the 10th, reeds lined the banks 
of the river on both sides, without any break, and waved 
like gloomy streamers over its turbid waters ; while the trees 
stood leafless and sapless in the midst of them. Wherever 
we landed, the same view presented itself — a waving ex- 
panse of reeds, and a country as flat as it is possible to ima- 
gine one. The eye could seldom penetrate beyond three 
quarters of a mile, and the labour of walking through the 
reeds was immense ; but within our observation all was green 
and cheerless. The morning had been extremely cold, with 
a thick haze at E. S. E. About 2 p.m. it came on to rain 
heavily, so that we did not stir after that hour. 
I had remarked that the Morumbidgee was not, from the 
depot downwards, so broad or so fine a river as it certainly 
is at the foot of the mountain ranges, where it gains the level 
country. The observations of the last two days had im- 
pressed upon my mind an idea that it was rapidly falling off, 
and I began to dread that it would finally terminate in one of 
those fatal marshes in which the Macquarie and the Lachlan 
exhaust themselves. My hope of a more favourable issue was 
considerably damped by the general appearance of the sur- 
rounding country ; and from the circumstance of our not 
having as yet passed a single tributary. As we proceeded 
down the river, its channel gradually contracted, and im- 
mense trees that had been swept down it by floods, rendered 
the navigation dangerous and intricate. Its waters became so 
