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
thought himself lost, got disheartened, grumbled and became exceedingly
annoying to me; but I could not help feeling for him, as he complained of
severe pain in his legs. We now entered extensive Ironbark flats, which
probably belong to the valley of the Mackenzie. Giving our position every
consideration, I determined upon returning to the mountains at which we
had turned, and took a north-west course. The country was again most
wretched, and at night we almost dropped from our saddles with fatigue.
Another pigeon was divided between us, but our tea was gone. Oppressed by
hunger, I swallowed the bones and the feet of the pigeon, to allay the
cravings of my stomach. A sleeping lizard with a blunt tail and knobby
scales, fell into our hands, and was of course roasted and greedily
eaten. Brown now complained of increased pain in his feet, and lost all
courage. "We are lost, we are lost," was all he could say. All my words
and assurances, all my telling him that we might be starved for a day or
two, but that we should most certainly find our party again, could not do
more than appease his anxiety for a few moments. The next morning, the
21st, we proceeded, but kept a little more to the westward, and crossed a
fine openly timbered country; but all the creeks went either to the east
or to the north. At last, after a ride of about four miles, Brown
recognized the place where we had breakfasted on the 19th, when all his
gloom and anxiety disappeared at once. I then returned on my south-east
course, and arrived at the camp about one o'clock in the afternoon; my
long absence having caused the greatest anxiety amongst my companions. I
shall have to mention several other instances of the wonderful quickness
and accuracy with which Brown as well as Charley were able to recognize
localities which they had previously seen. The impressions on their
retina seem to be naturally more intense than on that of the European;
and their recollections are remarkably exact, even to the most minute
details. Trees peculiarly formed or grouped, broken branches, slight
clevations of the ground--in fact, a hundred things, which we should
remark only when paying great attention to a place--seem to form a kind
of Daguerreotype impression on their minds, every part of which is
readily recollected.
I rejoined my party at the creek which comes from Mount Stewart. The
natives had approached Mr. Gilbert when out shooting, with a singular,
but apparently friendly, noise: "Ach! Ach! Ach!" They had heard the cooce
of my blackfellow Charley, and thought Mr. Gilbert wanted them; but, as
he was alone, he thought it prudent to retire to the camp.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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