CHAPTER III.
RUINED CASTLE CREEK--ZAMIA CREEK--BIGGE'S MOUNTAIN--ALLOWANCE OF FLOUR REDUCED--NATIVES SPEAR A HORSE--CHRISTMAS RANGES--BROWN'S LAGOONS--THUNDER-STORMS--ALBINIA DOWNS--COMET CREEK--NATIVE CAMP.
Dec.

1 .-- I rode to the eastward from our camp, to ascertain how far we were from the water-hole to which I had intended to conduct my party.
After having ascended the gullies, and passed the low scrub and cypress-pine thicket which surrounds them, I came into the open forest, and soon found our tracks, and the little creek for which I had steered the day before.

This creek, however, soon became a rocky gully, and joined a large creek, trending to the east and south-east.

Disheartened and fatigued, I returned to the camp, resolved upon following down the course of the Boyd to the south-west, until I should come into a more open country.

On my way back, I fell in with a new system of gullies, south of the creek I had left, and east of the creek on which our camp was, and which I had called "The Creek of the Ruined Castles," because high sandstone rocks, fissured and broken like pillars and walls and the high gates of the ruined castles of Germany, rise from the broad sandy summits of many hills on both sides of the valley.
When I returned to the camp, Mr.Gilbert told me, that Mr.Roper and John Murphy had been on a mountain towards the head of the main creek, north-west from our camp, and that they had seen an open country before them.