Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Volume 2: 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 2: 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
We then came upon a hill of granite, and from its summit I perceived that
we were already on the northern extremities of the high ranges we had
seen from the westward. After travelling some miles along the summits of
ridges in order to reach their connection with another range more to the
northward, I ascertained, on crossing the highest part of a second ridge,
that its northern slopes were very steep and rocky. A hill of
considerable height lay before us and therefore, as soon as I had
selected a spot for our camp in a little intervening valley, I hastened
to it, certainly in doubt how we should extricate the carts from the
rocky fastnesses before us. That summit afforded a commanding view of the
country beyond the granitic range, and I perceived that it was low to a
considerable distance northward, while the ranges beyond that extensive
basin seemed of no great elevation to the westward or north-west, and all
terminated on the level interior country where the horizon was broken by
only one remarkable hill which, as I afterwards learnt, was named Dingee.
In that direction I saw also open plains along which I thought I could
trace the line of the Ovens. In the lower country before me I hoped to
find the Murray, according to the map of Messrs. Hovell and Hume, which
in the two rivers we had recently passed seemed wonderfully correct.
LOFTY MASS NAMED MOUNT ABERDEEN.
I again recognised in the south and south-east some of the snowy peaks
formerly noticed, and I named the most lofty mass Mount Aberdeen. Beyond
what I considered to be the course or bed of the Murray there appeared
some steep ranges, to avoid which I chose a course more to the northward
than I should otherwise have pursued in my way towards Yass. Before I
returned to the camp I sought and succeeded in finding and marking out, a
line of route by which the carts could be conducted across these rocky
ranges and down to the lower country beyond them. On that range we found
a handsome blue flower which I had previously seen growing abundantly on
Bowral range near Mittagong within the present colony. We found in these
valleys abundance of good grass.
October 17.
We descended from the higher range without difficulty, and then crossed
several low ridges of quartz and clay-slate extending westward; some
flats of good land lay between these ridges and, at about 6 miles, we met
with a creek or chain of ponds. At 13 1/2 miles we entered a rich plain
terminating northward at a low but remarkable hill which I had observed
from the mountains.
REACH THE MURRAY.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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