122 RIDGE TO THE SOUTH-EAST. 
without apparently being aware of my presence. I then 
gave it a blow on the side of the head, and made it reel to 
one side, but the stick, being rotten, broke with the force 
of the blow, and thus disappointed me of a good meal. 
During my absence from the camp, a flight of cockatoos, 
new to us, but similar to one that Mr. Hume shot on the 
Darling, passed over the tents, and I found M'Leay, with 
his usual anxiety, trying to get a shot at them. They had, 
he told me, descended to water, but they had chosen a spot 
so difficult of approach without discovery, thathe had found 
it impossible to get within shot of them. 
There was a considerable rapid just below our position, 
which I examined before dark. Not seeing any danger, I 
requested M'Leay to proceed down it in the boat as soon 
as he had breakfasted, and to wait for me at the bottom of 
it. As I wished to ascertain the nature and height of the 
elevations which Fraser had magnified into something 
grand, Fraser and I proceeded to the centre of a large 
plain, stretching from the left bank of the river to the south- 
ward. It was bounded to the S.E. by a low scrub ; to the 
S. a thickly wooded ridge appeared to break the level of 
the country. It extended from east to west for four or five 
miles, and then gradually declined. At its termination, 
the country seemed to dip, and a dense fog, as from an ex- 
tensive sheet of water, enveloped the landscape. The plain 
was crowded with cockatoos, that were making their morn- 
ing’s repast on the berries of the salsolse and rhagodia, 
with which it was covered. 
