65 
FATE OF THE MACQUARIE. 
a frank and manly way, without the least embarrassment, 
and when the party passed, he stepped back to avoid the 
animals, without the smallest confusion. I am sure he was 
a very brave man; and I left him with the most favourable 
impressions, and not without hope that he would follow us. 
From a more open forest, we entered a dense scrub, the 
soil in which was of a bright-red colour and extremely 
sandy, and the timber of various kinds. A leafless species 
of stenochylus aphylta, which, from the resemblance, I at 
first thought one of the polygonum tribe, was very abun- 
dant in the open spaces, and the young cypresses were oc- 
casionally so close as to turn us from the direction in which 
we had been moving. In the scrub we crossed Mr. Hume’s 
tract, and, from the appearance of the ground, I was led to 
believe mine could not be very distant. 
We struck upon a creek late in the afternoon, at which 
we stopped ; New Year’s Range bearing nearly due west at 
about four miles’ distance. Had we struck upon my track, 
the question about which we were so anxious would still 
have been undecided ; but the circumstance of our havino- 
crossed Mr. Hume’s, which, from its direction, could not be 
mistaken, convinced me of the fate of the Macquarie, and I 
felt assured that, whatever channels it might have for the 
distribution of its waters, to the north of outline of route the 
equality of surface of the interior would never permit it a»in 
to forn, a river; and that it only required an examination of 
the lower parts of the marshes to confirm the theory of the 
ultimate evaporation and absorption of its waters, instead 
VOL. I. p 
