man, and diversified with scenery of great beauty. After travelling 150 miles from the lower swamps of the Lachlan the Macquarie was struck about 50 miles below the place where it had been seen by Evans. It was a river of good promise, and Oxley was strongly inclined to follow it, as he had done the Lachlan, but the slender remnant of provisions forbade the attempt. The expedition, therefore, made for Bathurst, which was reached on the 29th of August, after an absence of nineteen weeks. The distance travelled from start to finish amounted to 1,200 miles.
II.
Undeterred by the difficulties incurred on the Lachlan, Oxley, during the following year (1818), engaged in a similar expedition for the exploration of the lower course of the Macquarie. Tracing the unknown stream to the westward, he found himself led out of the region of hills into a country presenting a dead and monotonous level. Here the river began to lose its well-defined course and to spread its waters over the dreary expanse. With great difficulty, he succeeded in distinguishing the river from the lake for a short distance onward, after which further effort in a wide waste of water was to no purpose. Now, at last, he lost sight of land and trees altogether, though again able to discern the current of the Macquarie in a stream three feet deep winding in and out among thickets of reeds, which here grew to a gigantic
