I have the honour to inform your excellency, that I arrived at this port to-day, and circumstances rendering it necessary that Mr. Evans should proceed to Newcastle, I embrace the opportunity to make to your excellency a brief report of the route pursued by the western expedition entrusted to my direction. My letter, dated the 22nd of June last, will have made your excellency acquainted with the sanguine hopes I entertained, from the appearance of the river, that its termination would be either in interior waters, or coastwise. When I wrote that letter to your excellency, I certainly did not anticipate the possibility, that a very few days farther travelling would lead us to its termination as an accessible river. On the 28th of June, having traced its course without the smallest diminution or addition, about seventy miles farther to the north-north-west, there being a slight fresh in the river, it overflowed its banks, and although we were at the distance of near three miles from it, the country was so perfectly level that the waters soon spread over the ground on which we were. We had been for some days before travelling over such very low ground, that the people in the boats finding the country flooded, proceeded slowly; a circumstance which enabled me to send them directions to return to the station we had quitted in the morning, where the ground was a little more elevated. This spot being by no means secure, it was arranged that the horses, with the provisions, should return to the last high land we had quitted, a distance of sixteen miles; and as it appeared to me that the body of water in the river was too important to be much affected by the mere overflowing of its waters, I determined to take the large boat, and in her to endeavour to discover their point of discharge.