Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia, in Search of a Route from Sydney to the Gulf of Carpentaria (1848)Mitchell, T. L. (Thomas Livingstone)
History
Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia, in Search of a Route from Sydney to the Gulf of Carpentaria (1848)
Mitchell, T. L. (Thomas Livingstone)
New South Wales -- Discovery and exploration; Queensland -- Discovery and exploration
diminutive when compared with the vast body of water whereof traces had,
at another season, been left there; these affording evidence that,
although wide, they had still been impetuous in their course. Verdure
alone shone now, over the wide extent to which the waters sometimes rose.
Beyond that channel lay the almost boundless plains, the whole together
forming the finest region I had ever seen in Australia. Two kinds of
grass grew on these plains; one of them a brome grass, possessing the
remarkable property of shooting up green from the old stalk.
[* P. AVENACEUM (Lindl. MS.); aristis 9 inaequalibus scabris infra medium
plumosis, panicula pilosa angusta interrupta ramulis inferioribus demum
refractis, spiculis 3-floris, glumis pubescentibus multistriatis, paleis
villosis, foliis......]
The bees were also new to Yuranigh, who drew my attention to their
extreme smallness; not much exceeding in size a knat or mosquito.
Nevertheless, he could cut out their honey from hollow trees, and thus
occasionally procure for us a pleasant lunch, of a waxy compound, found
with the honey, which, in appearance and taste much resembled fine
gingerbread. The honey itself was slightly acid, but clear and fine
flavoured.
I hoped the deep reach would have been continuous, as it looked
navigable, even for steamers, but it continued so only for a few miles,
beyond which the channel contained ponds only. I finally alighted beside
one of these ponds, which was so large, indeed, that the colonists would
have called it a lagoon; this one being high above the river channel, on
a verdant plain. As yet, we had not seen a single inhabitant of this El
Dorado of Australia. At 2 P.M. thermometer 88 deg.. Height above the sea 712
feet.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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