Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia — CompleteSturt, Charles
History
Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia — Complete
Sturt, Charles
New South Wales -- Discovery and exploration; Sturt, Charles, 1795-1869
broad and noble river.
JUNCTION OF A LARGE RIVER--CHARACTER OF THE RIVER.
It is impossible for me to describe the effect of so instantaneous a
change of circumstances upon us. The boats were allowed to drift along at
pleasure, and such was the force with which we had been shot out of the
Morumbidgee, that we were carried nearly to the bank opposite its
embouchure, whilst we continued to gaze in silent astonishment on the
capacious channel we had entered; and when we looked for that by which we
had been led into it, we could hardly believe that the insignificant gap
that presented itself to us was, indeed, the termination of the beautiful
and noble stream, whose course we had thus successfully followed. I can
only compare the relief we experienced to that which the seaman feels on
weathering the rock upon which he expected his vessel would have
struck--to the calm which succeeds moments of feverish anxiety, when the
dread of danger is succeeded by the certainty of escape.
To myself personally, the discovery of this river was a circumstance of a
particularly gratifying nature, since it not only confirmed the justness
of my opinion as to the ultimate fate of the Morumbidgee, and bore me out
in the apparently rash and hasty step I had taken at the depot, but
assured me of ultimate success in the duty I had to perform. We had got on
the high road, as it were, either to the south coast, or to some
important outlet; and the appearance of the river itself was such as to
justify our most sanguine expectations. I could not doubt its being the
great channel of the streams from the S.E. angle of the island. Mr. Hume
had mentioned to me that he crossed three very considerable streams, when
employed with Mr. Hovell in 1823 in penetrating towards Port Phillips, to
which the names of the Goulburn, the Hume, and the Ovens, had been given;
and as I was 300 miles from the track these gentlemen had pursued, I
considered it more than probable that those rivers must already have
formed a junction above me, more especially when I reflected that the
convexity of the mountains to the S.E. would necessarily direct the waters
falling inwards from them to a common centre.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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