HALT IN A VALLEY.
After breakfast we continued on our route through a sandstone country precisely resembling the one which I have now described, and in the course of the day, having completed fifteen miles in a straight line, we halted for the night in a fertile valley affording plenty of fresh water, and so densely wooded with the dwarf pandanus and other prickly trees that we could scarcely make our way through the underwood.

In this valley we saw several sorts of cranes, principally Ardea antigone, and Ardea scolopacia, and I shot one of the former kind and laid it by, intending to eat it in the morning.

We could not find any holes in the rocks large enough to protect us from the rain, which fell throughout the night, accompanied by thunder and lightning.
December 20.
Just as we turned out this morning a large kangaroo came close to us to drink at a waterhole; the effect as it stole along through the thick bushes in the morning twilight was very striking.

I could not succeed in getting a shot at it; but, as I was determined to have a meat breakfast, I desired Mustard to cook the crane, the rats however had eaten the greater part of it; we therefore at once moved on and, after travelling four miles in a south-east direction over good land, we reached a valley, the largest and best I had yet seen, containing trees and birds such as we had not before met with; kangaroos were more plentiful, and, for the first time, we saw the opossum.

The valley was more than a mile in width at the point where we first made it, and we had but just time to cross it and to gain the partial shelter of some rocks when heavy rain again set in.