Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia, in Search of a Route from Sydney to the Gulf of Carpentaria (1848) — John Shaqi
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
I rode forward to Muda, accompanied by Dr. Stephenson and by Piper, and
had an interview with some of the heads of the old tribe, who remembered
my former visit, and very civilly accompanied me to show me my old track
and marked trees, which I found passed a little to the northward of my
present encampment. The chief, my old friend, had been killed in a fight
with the natives of the Macquarie, not long before. Two old grey-haired
men sitting silent in a gunya behind, were pointed out to me as his
brothers, one of whom so very much resembled him, that I had at first
imagined he was the man himself. These sat doubled up on their hams
opposite to each other, under the withered bushes, naked, and grey, and
melancholy--sad and hopeless types of their fading race!
The chief who formerly guided us so kindly had fallen in a hopeless
struggle for the existence of his tribe with the natives of the river
Macquarie, allied with the border police, on one side; and the wild
natives of the Darling on the other. All I could learn about the rest of
the tribe was, that the men were almost all dead, and that their wives
were chiefly servants at stock stations along the Macquarie.
The natives of Muda assured me there was no water nearer than Nyingan, a
large pond which I knew was 22 1/3 miles distant, in a direct line lower
down the Bogan. The ponds of Muda, their great store of water, and known
to white men as the largest on the Bogan, were alarmingly low, and it
became evident that our progress under such a scarcity of water would be
attended with difficulty. These natives gave us also a friendly hint that
"GENTLEMEN" should be careful of the spears of the natives of Nyingan, as
many natives of Nyingan had been shot lately by white men from Wellington
Valley.
Among the woods we observed the white-flowered TEUCRIUM RACEMOSUM, the
JUSTICIA MEDIA, a small herbaceous plant with deep pink flowers; also a
STENOCHILUS and FUSANUS (the Quandang), although not in fruit; a new
species of STIPA, remarkable for its fine silky ears and coarse rough
herbage.[*] This place produced also a fine new species of Chloris in the
way of C. TRUNCATA, but with upright ears, and hard three-ribbed
pales,[**] and we here observed, for the first time, a fine new
EREMOPHILA with white flowers, forming a tree fifteen feet high.[***] The
beautiful DAMASONIUM OVALIFOLIUM, with white flowers red in the centre,
still existed in the water.
[* S. SCABRA (Lindl. MS.), aristis nudis, paleis pubescentibus basi
villosis, glumis setaceo-acuminatis glabris, foliis scabropilosis
involutis culmis brevioribus, geniculis pubescentibus, ligula oblonga
subciliata.]
[** C. SCLERANTHA (Lindl. MS.), culmo stricto, foliis planis glabris
tactu scabris, spicis 4--7-strictis, spiculis bifloris, flore utroque
breviaristato cartilagineo truncato 3-nervi glabro supremo sterili
vacuo.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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