On the 28th the camp was shifted to this lagoon, and the boat was launched once more; without result. The new-found channel was soon lost in reeds and shallows. Forced to halt again, Hume went to the north-east to scout, and Sturt went north-west, each accompanied, as before, by two men. They left the camp on the last day of the year. After sunset on the first day, Sturt struck a creek of considerable size leading northerly, having good water in its bed. The next day, after passing through alternate plain and brush for eighteen miles, a second creek was found, inferior to the first both in size and the quality of the water; it too ran northerly. Crossing this creek, after a short halt, they travelled through stony ridges and open forest, and at night camped on the edge of a waterless plain, after a hot and thirsty ride; here one of the men, noticing the flight of a pigeon, found a small puddle of rain water that just sufficed them. Next day, the country steadily improving in appearance, they made west by south for an isolated mountain with perpendicular sides, from the top of which Sturt trusted to see something hopeful ahead. He was disappointed, the country was monotonous and level, and no sign of a river could be seen. They camped that night at a small swamp, and next morning Sturt turned back, like Oxley, coming to the conclusion that:-- "Yet upon the whole, the space I traversed is unlikely to become the haunt of civilised man, or will become so in isolated spots, as a chain of connection to a more fertile country; if such a country exist to the westward." Hume had not returned when the party reached the main camp on the 5th of January; the next day he made his appearance. He reported having travelled, on various courses, about thirty miles N.N.W. over an indifferent country. He had anticipated meeting with the Castlereagh, but had been forced to conclude that that river had taken a more northerly course than Mr. Oxley had supposed. He went westward, and across fine far-stretching plains, but saw no sign of the Macquarie River having re-formed, crossing nothing but small 'reeks or chains of ponds. Most of the men, including Hume, complaining of sickness, he camp was shifted four miles to the north, on to a chain of ponds reported by Hume. This creek they followed down, when it disappointed them by disappearing in the marsh. Without water, they continued skirting the low country until fatigue compelled them to stop, when, by digging shallow wells in the reeds, they obtained a small supply. From here they made their way by a different route to the hill that had terminated Sturt's late trip, and which he had christened Oxley's Tableland. Here they rested a few days, and Sturt and Hume, with two men, made another excursion westward, but without result. Their only resource now was to make north to a creek that they had followed down on their way to Oxley's tableland, and see where it would lead them.