No accident, save the temporary indisposition of some of the ladies of our party, and Captain Davidson’s unfortunate entanglement of his foot in the machinery, occurred to interrupt the serenity of our voyage; some atrocities, however, committed by the natives upon white men, had, it appeared, disturbed the tranquillity of the river. Mr. Scott, the Government officer from Moorundee, we found, had been in pursuit of some of these malefactors, and from this gentleman, whom with his brother we encountered at Chapman’s Station (Paringa), we learned that one of these natives had been wounded desperately in an attempt to escape from the police; and that another had been killed by the settlers, whilst endeavouring to arrest him. A third, captured by one of the Adelaide police, we conveyed to the Darling, where he was handed over to Mr. Fletcher, a Magistrate of New South Wales[8], whose professional services (for he had formerly been a medical practitioner) had been called in request on Mr. Davidson’s account. This gentleman, who lived fifteen miles from McLeod’s, where a tolerable inn and some good horses were discovered, was sent for at His Excellency’s request, and in obeying the requisition unfortunately received a fall from his horse, which, though inflicting no severer injury than a bruised forehead and face, must have been sufficiently annoying to spoil the pleasure which, in common with all other settlers upon the river, he evidently derived at the arrival of the steamer. His services, I may also mention, were called into play by the sudden illness of one of the ladies of our party, whose rashness in bathing, at an early or unseasonable hour appears to have been followed by serious though brief indisposition. Mr. Fletcher spoke with some degree of feeling of a barbarous murder committed by a black, about ten days before, upon a white man, whose horse he had undertaken to guide through a ford. Indeed, these acts of reiterated villany call for the active interference of the Sydney authorities. The land on the Murray to this point (the Darling) is all occupied, chiefly by large stock proprietors or squatters; for agriculture, whether on account of the excessive dryness of the soil, or for want of labour, appears little attended to. The settlers seem to want energy in their pursuits, but perhaps the badness of the communications hitherto with a market, and the uncertain tenure of their runs, may explain their inactivity. Irrigation and embankment could not fail to improve the land, but if there existed no means of disposing of produce, it is easily imagined why these labours have not been tried.