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After travelling seven miles, in a north-west direction, we came on a dense Myal scrub, skirted by a chain of shallow water-holes. The scrub trending towards, and disappearing in, the S. W.: the Loranthus and the Myal in immense bushes; Casuarina frequent. In the forest, Ranunculus inundatus; Eryngium with terete simple leaves, of which the horses are fond; Prasophyllum elatum, sweetly scented.
The river was very winding, so that we did not advance more than 7 or 8 miles W.N.W.; the Bricklow scrub compelled us frequently to travel upon the flood-bed of the river. Fine grassy forest-land intervened between the Bricklow and Myal scrubs; the latter is always more open than the former, and the soil is of a rich black concretionary character. Oct. 9.
Here we passed an extensive Myal forest, the finest I had seen, covering the hilly and undulating country, interspersed with groves of the native lemon tree; a few of which were still sufficiently in fruit to afford us some refreshment.
By the fifth night of our travels we had met no water or any places that could hold it, and apparently we had left all the salt basins behind. Up to this point we had been continually in dense scrubs, but here the country became a little more open; myal timber, acacia, generally took the places of the mallee and the casuarinas; the spinifex disappeared, and real grass grew in its place.
The view displayed hills for miles in all directions, amongst which were many bare rocks of red colour heaped into the most fantastically tossed mounds imaginable, with here and there an odd shrub growing from the interstices of the rocks; some small miniature creeks, with only myal and mulga growing in them, ran through the valleys all of these had recently been running.
I found a species of snail nearly resembling Succinea, in the fissures of the bark of the Myal, on the Box, and in the moist grass. The muscle-shells are of immense size.
A small orange tree, about 5-8 minutes high, grows either socially or scattered in the open scrub, and a leafless shrub, belonging to the Santalaceae, grows in oblong detached low thickets. Chenopodiaceous plants are always frequent where the Myal grows. The latitude of our camp was 26 degrees 56 minutes 11 seconds. Oct. 6.
Commenced with cloudy weather, threatening rain. It cleared up, however, about 10 o'clock, and we had a very warm day. We followed the course of the river for some time, which is fringed with Myal scrubs, separated by hills with fine open forest.
Occasionally we met with swampy ground, covered with reeds, and with some standing water of the last rains; the ground was so rotten, that the horses and bullocks sunk into it over the fetlocks. The principal timber trees here, are the bastard box, the flooded-gum, and the Moreton Bay ash; in the Myal scrub, Coxen's Acacia attains a very considerable size; we saw also some Ironbark trees.
The grasses are at present in full ear, and often four feet high; but the tufts are distant, very different from the dense sward at the other side of the Range. As we left the Myal country of the Condamine, we left also its herbage, abounding in composite, leguminous, and chenopodiaceous plants, with a great variety of grasses. Oct. 20. This morning, at half-past nine o'clock, Messrs.
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