Both boats were moved off down the river at daylight, and ere it had passed away, the ford above Steep Head was left behind. We found that the watering boats had not got over the shallow below, so that we spent the night together; and a merry party we made. We talked over all we had seen, and the hills that rose around echoed back for the first time the laugh and the song of civilized man, and our strange language was repeated as glibly by the rocks of Australia as if they were those of our own native land. So true is it that nature is ever ready to commune familiarly with us, whereas by our very brethren we are looked upon as enemies to shun, and are incapable of making ourselves understood by them. A DESERTER. When the morning of the 15th broke it was discovered that one of the men belonging to the watering party had deserted during the night. He had been guilty of this offence once before, in order to steal the spirits which had been buried for the use of my exploring party. What however could have induced him to take this step a second time--risking, without any apparent motive, the danger of being left on a strange, and almost uninhabited coast, it would be difficult even to suggest. Parties were immediately despatched in quest of him, and at length, after an arduous search, he was found behind a large sandstone rock on the side of a hill; having revisited the spot where the provisions had been concealed for the use of my party, in the hope of obtaining possession of his god the rum-keg. He had evidently prepared for desertion: clothing, biscuit, and fishing-tackle being among the stores with which he had made off. This despicable wretch--for such must everyone consider the man who would steal his shipmates' provisions, when each had only his bare allowance--had nothing to say, either in extenuation or explanation of his conduct. Most fortunate for him was it that our humane exertions to discover his retreat were successful; he could not long have subsisted by himself, and even had he been so happy as to fall in with, and receive hospitable welcome from the natives, he must of necessity have lingered out a life of toilsome, cheerless hardship while a companion of their wanderings, and when unfitted for this by old age, he would, according to the custom of the country, have been left to die, unfriended and alone, upon the spot where his last weary efforts failed. The delay occasioned by this extraordinary and unlooked-for event, made it late by the time all the boats were fairly on their way down the river. The wind was light from the north-east, and the temperature about 90 degrees, at 9 o'clock. NEW KANGAROO.