Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Volume 1: With Descriptions of the Recently Explored Region of Australia Felix, and of the Present Colony of New South WalesMitchell, T. L. (Thomas Livingstone)
History
Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Volume 1: With Descriptions of the Recently Explored Region of Australia Felix, and of the Present Colony of New South Wales
Mitchell, T. L. (Thomas Livingstone)
Australia -- Discovery and exploration; Mitchell, T. L. (Thomas Livingstone), 1792-1855
It is on occasions such as these that the adventurer has intervals of
enjoyment which amply reward him for laborious days of hardship and
privation. The sense of gratification and repose is intense in such
extreme cases, and cannot be known to him whose life is counted out in a
monotonous succession of hours of eating and sleeping within a house;
whose food is adulterated by spices, and sauces, intolerable to real
hunger--and whose drink, instead of the sweet refreshing distillation
from the heavens, consists of vile artificial extracts, loathed by the
really thirsty man with whom the pure element resumes its true value, and
establishes its real superiority over every artificial beverage.
ASCEND MOUNT JUSON WITH MR. CUNNINGHAM.
April 11.
At seven o'clock I proceeded with Mr. Cunningham to the summit of a cone,
bare of timber, which I had observed from the Canobolas, and which bore
138 degrees east of north from our camp, distant about six miles. The
ascent was easy, and from the summit (on which Mr. Cunningham obligingly
erected a pyramid) I obtained many valuable angles with my theodolite on
the very distant hills which broke the western horizon. We found the
variation of the needle to be 8 degrees 40 minutes East. This hill I
named, at Mr. Cunningham's request, Mount Juson.
ENTER THE VALLEY OF THE GOOBANG.
We returned to the camp at half-past two, when we found the party ready
to start; and accordingly we proceeded forward. Our journey was through
verdant vales, increasing in width as we followed the channel of the
stream we had traced from the mountain, and which now contained abundant
pools of water.
MEET THE NATIVES.
At length the sound of the native's hatchet was heard, and one came
forward to meet me. We learned from him that we were upon Buranbil creek,
and that its course was south-west towards the Calare, or Lachlan. The
range whence we came they called Warre (Croker's range of Oxley) and that
north of it Goobang (Harvey's range of the same) from which, as I was
also informed, a creek of similar name issued and flowed into the
Buranbil.
The evening was beautiful; the new grass springing in places where it had
been burnt presented a shining verdure in the rays of the descending sun;
the songs of the birds accorded here with other joyous sounds, the very
air seemed alive with the music of animated nature, so different was the
scene in this well-watered valley from that of the parched and silent
region from which we had just descended.
SOCIAL ENCAMPMENT.
The natives whom we met here were fine-looking men, enjoying contentment
and happiness within the precincts of their native woods. Their enjoyment
seemed derived so directly from nature that it almost excited a feeling
of regret that civilised men, enervated by luxury and all its concomitant
diseases, should ever disturb the haunts of these rude but happy beings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account