numbers, offering excellent sport. The natives also were met with more frequently than would have been agreeable had they been disposed to be troublesome, which, fortunately, they were not. The one thing which surprised the explorers was the behaviour of the Lachlan, which, after showing itself a goodly river of a hundred feet in width, threatened to end its career in a most undignified fashion. This it very soon did, as they believed, by resolving itself into a succession of marshes, to which they gave the name of the Lachlan Swamps. Being unable to trace the river any further, Oxley now resolved to abandon the enterprise and return home by a different route. He made up his mind, accordingly, to make for the southern coast, which he hoped to strike about Cape Northumberland, and thence reach Sydney by sea. In this direction the course was steered till the 4th of July, when further progress became extremely difficult, from the sterility of the country and almost interminable forests of mallee, which Oxley, in a play of the imagination, named the Euryalean scrub. At last it became apparent to all that they would have to return to the Lachlan, through the want of water, if for no other cause, and this was now done. The retrograde movement was singularly unfortunate. Had they proceeded only twenty miles further the Murrumbidgee would have been discovered, with its never-failing volume of water. But, in their ignorance, it was otherwise determined, and a laurel lost to the wreath of this distinguished
