I determined, therefore, to stay where I was until the following day, to give my animals the food and rest they so much required, and myself time for reflection.

We accordingly dismounted, and turned the horses out, and it was really a pleasure to see them in clover.
The whole bed of the creek was of a vivid green, excepting where gravel had been deposited in it, but the animals kept on the grass, close to the water's edge.

As we had approached the creek through a belt of wood, so it extended on the other side for a considerable distance into the plains, but the soil was not so good as in the neighbourhood of the first channel we had crossed, since bushes of rhagodia were growing underneath the trees, as indicative of a slight mixture of salt in the earth.

The appearance of the creek, however, embosomed as it was in wood, was very fine, more especially the upward view of it, where there was a splendid sheet of water, in the centre of which the branches of a huge tree appeared reflected, the trunk being completely hid.

About a quarter of a mile above us a tributary joins the main branch from the eastward, that when flooded must have a fall of three or four feet, and something of the character of a Canadian rapid.
When I sat down beside the waters of the beautiful channel to which Providence in its goodness had been pleased to direct my steps, I felt more than I had ever done in my life, the responsibility of the task I had undertaken.