THE MACQUARIE. 
59 
by any possible exaggeration have been laid down as the 
bed of the river, that I detached Mr. Hume ; and the ac- 
count he brought me at once confirmed my opinion in re- 
gard to the Macquarie, and I thenceforth gave up every 
hope of ever seeing it in its characteristic shape again. 
Independently however of all circumstantial evidence, it 
was clear that the river had not re-formed at a distance of 
twenty-five miles to the north of us, since Mr. Hume had 
gone to the westward of that point, at about the same dis- 
tance on his late journey, without having observed the 
least appearance of reeds or of a river. He had, indeed, 
noticed a hollow, which occasionally contained water, but 
he saw nothing like the bed of a permanent stream. I 
became convinced, also, from observation of the country 
through which we had passed, that the sources of the Mac- 
quarie could not be of such magnitude as to give a constant 
flow to it as a river, and at the same time to supply with 
water the vast concavity into which it falls. In very 
heavy rains only could the marshes and adjacent lands be 
laid wholly under water, since the evaporation alone would 
be equal to the supply. 
The great plains stretching for so many miles to the 
westward of Mount Harris, even where they were clear of 
reeds, were covered with shells and the claws of cray-fish, 
and their soil, although an alluvial deposit, was superfi- 
cially sandy. They bore the appearance not only of fre- 
quent inundation, but of the floods having eventually 
subsided upon them. This was particularly observable at 
