Kilcoy, Durundur, reaching Brisbane on December 16th, 1856. * * * * * Mr. A. C. Gregory's expedition in search of Leichhardt was equipped by the New South Wales Government. The objects of this expedition were primarily to search for traces of Leichhardt and his party, and secondly the examination of the country in the intervening spaces between the tracks of previous explorers. The expedition was organised in Sydney, and made a start from Juandah, on the Dawson River, on March 24th, 1857. They crossed the dense scrubs and basaltic ridge dividing the Dawson waters from those trending to the west, flowing into the basin of the Maranoa River. The Maranoa was reached in latitude 25 deg. 45 min., and they followed it up to Mount Owen, advanced to the Warrego River, westward from there to the Nive, and pursued a north-north-west course to the Barcoo River, then called the Victoria. As the captain of the "Beagle" had discovered and named the Victoria River on the north-west coast first, the name of Sir T. Mitchell's river was changed to the Barcoo, a native name. When Mr. Gregory traversed this fine country, one of those devastating periodical droughts that visit this inland territory now and again, must have been prevailing for many months, and had left the land a wilderness. That land Mitchell had described in 1846 in glowing language as the fairest that the sun shone on, with pastures and herbage equal to all the wants of man, and water in abundance covered with wild fowl. When Gregory passed through it in 1857, it was bare of all vegetation, there was scarcely any water in the bed of the river, and that only at long intervals, nothing but the bare brown earth visible.