Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia — Volume 2Sturt, Charles
History
Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia — Volume 2
Sturt, Charles
New South Wales -- Discovery and exploration; Sturt, Charles, 1795-1869
Immediately below the point on which they stood, Mr. Kent says, a low
undulating country extended to the northward, as far as he could see.
It was partly open, and partly wooded; and was every where covered with
verdure. It continued round to the eastward, and apparently ran down
southerly, at the opposite base of the mount Barker Range. I think
there can be but little doubt that my view from the S.E., that is, from
the lake, extended over the same or a part of the same country. Captain
Barker again slept on the summit of the range, near a large basin that
looked like the mouth of a crater, in which huge fragments of rocks
made a scene of the utmost confusion. These rocks were a coarse grey
granite, of which the higher parts and northern termination of the
Mount Lofty range are evidently formed; for Mr. Kent remarks that it
superseded the schistose formation at the ravine we have noticed--and
that, subsequently, the sides of the hills became more broken, and
valleys, or gullies, more properly speaking, very numerous. Captain
Barker estimated the height of Mount Lofty above the sea at 2,400 feet,
and the distance of its summit from the coast at eleven miles. Mr. Kent
says they were surprised at the size of the trees on the immediate brow
of it; they measured one and found it to be 43 feet in girth. Indeed,
he adds, vegetation did not appear to have suffered either from its
elevated position, or from any prevailing wind. Eucalypti were the
general timber on the ranges; one species of which, resembling strongly
the black butted-gum, was remarkable for a scent peculiar to its bark.
AUSTRALIAN SALMON.
The party rejoined the soldiers on the 21st, and enjoyed the supply of
fish which they had provided for them. The soldiers had amused
themselves by fishing during Captain Barker's absence, and had been
abundantly successful. Among others they had taken a kind of salmon,
which, though inferior in size, resembled in shape, in taste, and in
the colour of its flesh, the salmon of Europe. I fancied that a fish
which I observed with extremely glittering scales, in the mouth of a
seal, when myself on the coast, must have been of this kind; and I have
no doubt that the lake is periodically visited by salmon, and that
these fish retain their habits of entering fresh water at particular
seasons, also in the southern hemisphere.
Immediately behind Cape Jervis, there is a small bay, in which
according to the information of the sealers who frequent Kangaroo
Island, there is good and safe anchorage for seven months in the year,
that is to say, during the prevalence of the E. and N.E. winds.
SURVEY OF THE COAST.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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