Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia: From Moreton Bay to Port Essington, a distance of upwards of 3000 miles, during the years 1844-1845Leichhardt, Ludwig
History
Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia: From Moreton Bay to Port Essington, a distance of upwards of 3000 miles, during the years 1844-1845
Leichhardt, Ludwig
Australia -- Description and travel; Australia -- Discovery and exploration
The morning of Easter Sunday was very clear and hot; the wind from E.N.E.
As soon as we had celebrated the day with a luncheon of fat damper and
sweetened tea, I rode with Charley about seven or eight miles down the
river, and found abundance of water, not only in the bed of the river,
but in lines of lagoons parallel to it. Charley shot several ducks, which
were very numerous upon the water. Whilst riding along the bank of the
river, we saw an old woman before us, walking slowly and thoughtfully
through the forest, supporting her slender and apparently exhausted frame
with one of those long sticks which the women use for digging roots; a
child was running before her. Fearing she would be much alarmed if we
came too suddenly upon her,--as neither our voices in conversation, nor
the footfall of our horses, attracted her attention,--I cooeed gently;
after repeating the call two or three times, she turned her head; in
sudden fright she lifted her arms, and began to beat the air, as if to
take wing,--then seizing the child, and shrieking most pitifully, she
rapidly crossed the creek, and escaped to the opposite ridges. What could
she think; but that we were some of those imaginary beings, with legends
of which the wise men of her people frighten the children into obedience,
and whose strange forms and stranger doings are the favourite topics of
conversation amongst the natives at night when seated round their fires?
I observed a fine sienite on several spots; it is of a whitish colour,
and contains hornblende and mica in almost equal quantities; granite was
also seen, and both rocks probably belong to each other, the presence of
hornblende being local. A very hard pudding-stone crops out about nine
miles down the river. From the ridges, hills were seen to the N.N.E. and
to the westward. Vitex scrub is met with in patches of small extent. A
white crane, and the whistling duck, were seen. Black ducks and teal were
most common, and Charley shot eight of them. On the banks of the more or
less dry water-holes grows an annual leguminous plant, which shoots up
into a simple stem, often to the height of twelve feet; its neck and root
are covered with a spongy tissue; its leaves are pinnate, a foot or more
in length, with small leaflets; it bears mottled yellow flowers, in
axillary racemes; and long rough, articulate pods, containing small,
bright, olive-green seeds. I first saw this plant at Limestone, near
Moreton Bay, and afterwards at the water-holes of Comet River. It was
extremely abundant in the bed of the Burdekin, and was last seen on the
west side of the gulf of Carpentaria; I could, however, easily
distinguish three species of this plant. [They belong probably to the
two genera, Aeschynomene and Sesbania.]
Last evening, clouds gathered in the west, but cleared off after sunset;
the night again cloudy, the forenoon equally so; in the afternoon the
clouds were dissipated by a north-east wind.
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