I myself determined to cross the river, and to skirt the marshes on the left, and in case they turned off to the north east, as they appeared to do, it was my intention to pursue a N.W. course into the interior, to learn the nature of it. With these views I left the camp on the 31st of December, and did not return until the 5th of January. Having found early in my journey, from the change of soil and of timber, that I was leaving the neighbourhood of the Macquarie, I followed a N.W. course, from a more northerly one, and struck at once across the country, under an impression that Mr. Hume would have made the river again long before my return. I found, after travelling between twenty and thirty miles, the country began to rise; and at the end of my journey, I made a hill of considerable elevation, from the summit of which I had a view of other high lands; one to the S.W. being a very fine mountain. As I had not found any water excepting in two creeks, which I had left far behind me, and as I had got on a soil which appeared incapable of holding it, I made this the termination of my journey, having exceeded 100 miles in distance from the camp, on my return to which I found Mr. Hume still absent. When he joined, he stated to me, that not making the Castlereagh as soon as he expected, he had bent down westerly for the Macquarie, and that he ended his journey at some gentle hills he had made; so that it appeared we must either have crossed each other's line of route, or that they were very near, and that want of length must alone have prevented them from crossing; but as such all assumption led to the conclusion that the Macquarie no longer existed, I determined to pursue a middle course round the swamps, to ascertain the point; as in case the river had ended, a westerly course was the one which my instructions directed me to pursue. In the immediate neighbourhood of the marshes we were obliged to sink wells for water, and it was thus early that we began to feel the want of a regular supply. Having made a creek about four miles from our position by cutting through the reeds where there was a narrow space, we pursued a westerly course over a plain, having every appearance of frequent inundation, and for four or five days held nearly the same direction; in the course of which we crossed both our tracks on the excursions we had made, which had intersected each other in a dense oak brush; thus renewing the few doubts, or rather the doubt we had as to the fate of the Macquarie, whose course we had been sent to trace. Indeed, had I not felt convinced that that river had ceased, I should not have moved westward without further examination, but we had passed through a very narrow part of the marshes, and round the greater part of them, and had not seen any hollow that could by any possible exaggeration be construed into or mistaken for the channel of a river.