Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia — Volume ISturt, Charles
History
Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia — Volume I
Sturt, Charles
New South Wales -- Discovery and exploration; Sturt, Charles, 1795-1869
In supporting his opinion of the probable discharge of the interior
waters of Australia upon its north-west coast, Mr. Cunningham thus
remarks in the publication from which I have already made an extract.
"To those remarkable parts of the north-west coast above referred to in
the parallel of 16 degrees south, the Macquarie river, which rises in
lat. 33 degrees, and under the meridian of 150 degrees east, would have
a course of 2045 statute miles throughout, while the elevation of its
source, being 3500 feet above the level of the sea as shown by the
barometer, would give its waters an average descent of twenty inches to
the mile, supposing the bed of the river to be an inclined plane.
"The Gwydir originating in elevated land, lying in 31 degrees south,
and long. 151 degrees east, at a mean height of 3000 feet, would have
to flow 2020 miles, its elevated sources giving to each a mean fall of
seventeen inches.
"Dumaresq's river falling 2970 feet from granite mountains, in 28 1/4
degrees under the meridian of 152 degrees, would have to pursue its
course for 2969 miles, its average fall being eighteen inches to a
mile."
As I have never been upon the banks either of the Gwydir or the
Dumaresq, I cannot speak of those two rivers; but in estimating the
sources of the Macquarie at 3500 feet above the level of the sea, Mr.
Cunningham has lost sight of, or overlooked the fact, that the fall of
its bed in the first two hundred miles, is more than 2800 feet, since
the cataract, which is midway between Wellington Valley and the
marshes, was ascertained by barometrical admeasurement, to be 680 feet
only above the ocean. The country, therefore, through which the
Macquarie would have to flow during the remainder of its course of 1700
miles, in order to gain the N.W. coast, would not be a gradually
inclined plain, but for the most part a dead level, and the fact of its
failure is a sufficient proof in itself how short the course of a river
so circumstanced must necessarily be.
MR. OXLEY'S OPINIONS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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