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
even before they know the shame of nakedness. Such were the reflections
suggested to my mind by the young savage as he tripped on lightly before
me by the side of his two half-civilised brethren of our party, who,
muffled up in clothes, presented a contrast by no means in favour of our
pretensions to improve and benefit their race. Yet our faithful Yuranigh
was all that could be wished. He was assiduously making to the stranger
such explanations of our wants and purposes, as induced him to conduct us
in the direction these required. He led us, thus admonished, over those
parts of the country most favourable for the passage of wheels. The
rosewood acacia was abundant, but many parts were covered with most
luxuriant grass. We encamped on the edge of a salt-bush plain, where
there was a small pond of water left by the last rains on a clay surface.
There was certainly enough for ourselves and horses, but it appeared that
our guide had greatly underrated the capacity for water, of our hundred
bullocks. For these, however, there was superb grass to the westward, and
a little dew fell on it during the night. Thermometer at sunrise, 59 deg.; at
noon, 102 deg.; at 4 P. M., 104 deg.; at 9, 77 deg.;--with wet bulb, 65 deg..
20TH FEBRUARY.--From the necessity for obtaining water as soon as
possible for the bullocks, we travelled over ground which was rather
soft, otherwise our guide would have pursued a course more to the
westward, and over a firmer surface. We, at length, crossed two narrow
belts of reeds not more than twenty feet across, and had the great
satisfaction to learn from him that these were the last of the reeds. A
shallow creek appeared soon thereafter on our right, in which our guide
had expected to find water, but was disappointed; cattle having recently
drank up there, what had been a large pond when he was there formerly. He
showed us the recent prints of numerous cloven feet, and thus we were
made to feel, in common with the aborigines, those privations to which
they are exposed by the white man's access to their country. On
proceeding some miles further, our guide following down the channel, he
at length appeared at a distance making the motions of stooping to bathe,
on which Yuranigh immediately said "He has found plenty of water;" and
there, in fact, our guide had found two large ponds. They were still in
the attenuated channel of the Macquarie, here called by them Wammerawa,
the course of which river is continuous throughout the marshes; and
marked by some high reeds greener than the rest, even when the reeds may
have been generally burnt. These reeds are distinctly different from the
"balyan," growing on the marshy parts of the rivers Lachlan,
Murrumbidgee, and Millewa; the former being a cane or bamboo, the latter
a bulrush, affording, in its root, much nutritious gluten. We found good
grass for the cattle on both sides of the water-course, which was fringed
with a few tall reeds, near which the pretty little KOCHIA BREVIFOLIA
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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