Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2: Discoveries in Australia; with an Account of the Coasts and Rivers; Explored and Surveyed During the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, in The; Years 1837-38-39-40-41-42-43. By Command of the Lords Commissioners; Of the Admiralty. Also a Narrative of Captain Owen Stanley's Visits; To the Islands in the Arafura SeaStokes, John Lort
History
Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2: Discoveries in Australia; with an Account of the Coasts and Rivers; Explored and Surveyed During the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, in The; Years 1837-38-39-40-41-42-43. By Command of the Lords Commissioners; Of the Admiralty. Also a Narrative of Captain Owen Stanley's Visits; To the Islands in the Arafura Sea
Stokes, John Lort
Australia -- Description and travel; Australia -- Discovery and exploration; Natural history -- Australia
In a pool of the river near our resting place, I caught, within an hour,
some dozen good-sized fish: using a bait of kangaroo flesh. There were
two sorts, one of the shape of a trout, and ten inches long; it had a
dirty orange-yellow belly, and a muddy bronze back; the lower hole of the
nose had a raised margin. The other measured seven inches, and resembled
in shape a small fish at home, known to all schoolboys as the
prickle-back; it was curiously marked, having five spots nearly black on
each side, near the ridge of the back; the ground around them was a dark
glossy brown; the belly was a slightly shining white, reaching as far up
as the lower line of the eye and the margin of the spots.
While Mr. Bynoe was occupied in making sketches of them, which have been
transmitted to Dr. Richardson, Mr. Forsyth and myself ascended a
neighbouring hillock, and traced the river in a westerly direction for
two miles; it then turned round to North-North-East: a deep narrow valley
separated it from the higher land to the eastward. The bed of the river
at this place, though partly dry, was wider than we had hitherto seen it,
and the trees upon its banks still showed evident signs of being washed
by a mountain torrent. After making a set of observations for longitude,
we started again at 3 o'clock P.M. taking a north-west direction over a
flat of tolerably fine light mould. Near here a party of natives crossed
the river, in the direction of those we had first seen: perhaps to effect
a junction of forces and demand the meaning of our strange intrusion. We
took an East 1/2 North direction across the flat, but finding the ground
very broken and stony, intersected by deep watercourses, and rendered
additionally impracticable by high grass and thick reeds, we were
compelled, after getting half across, to make the best of our way to the
river.
FATIGUE OF THE PARTY.
It was intensely hot, not a breath of air stirring, and to add to our
misfortunes, we had inadvertently dined off the contents of a canister of
salt meat. We reached the river at half-past five, being all of us pretty
well knocked up with heat, fatigue, and thirst: one of our party, I heard
afterwards, drank nearly TWO QUARTS of water at a draught.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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