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
course might be explored while the men made a fit passage across it for
the carts.
May 20.
This morning the weather appeared beautifully serene; and the barometer
had risen higher than I had ever seen it on this side of the mountains.
Mr. Stapylton, who left the camp in the morning, returned about sunset
after exploring the creek through a very tortuous course, more or less to
the northward of west. He had also ascertained that it supplied a small
lake about eight miles to the westward of our camp, whence he had
perceived its course bending again towards the river, of which he in fact
considered it only a branch: and I therefore concluded that the ponds of
water so abundant in it were but the remains of a flood in the
Murrumbidgee.
May 21.
A good passageway having been made, we crossed the watercourse and
proceeded towards Lake Stapylton as I understood that there we might
easily recross. I was informed by Burnett that when the journey commenced
this morning the gins in the bush had not responded to Piper's call until
after such a search as convinced him that both intended to leave the
party. He said that in such cases the law of the aborigines was that the
two first attempts of a wife to leave her husband might be punished by a
beating, but that for the third offence he might put her to death. On the
way we traversed the head of a creek somewhat similar to the last, at a
place where it was nearly level with the plain although, just below, it
contained a fine reach of water obviously supplied by the river.
SERIOUS ACCIDENT; A CARTWHEEL PASSES OVER THE WIDOW'S CHILD.
Here an unfortunate accident befel the little native child Ballandella
who fell from a cart and, one of the wheels passing over, broke her
thigh. On riding up I found The Widow her mother in great distress,
prostrate in the dust with her head under the limb of the unfortunate
child. I made the doctor set it immediately; but the femora having been
broken very near the socket, it was found difficult to bandage the limb
so as to keep the bone in its place. Every care however was taken of the
poor little infant that circumstances would allow; and she bore the pain
with admirable patience though only four years old. In her cries on first
meeting with the accident she was heard to call for Majy, a curious
instance of this child's sense at so early an age.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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