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
My anxiety for them led me to wander down the bed of the creek, when,
to my joy, I found a pond of water within a hundred yards of the tents.
It is impossible for me to describe the relief I felt at this success,
or the gladness it spread among the men. Mr. Hume joined me at dusk,
and informed me that he had made a circuit, and had struck upon the
creek about three miles below us but that, in tracing it up, he had not
found a drop of water until he came to the pond near which we had so
providentially encamped. On the following morning, we held a westerly
course over an open country for about eight miles and a half. The
prevailing timber appeared to be a species of eucalypti, with rough
bark, of small size, and evidently languishing from the want of
moisture. The soil over which we travelled was far from bad, but there
was a total absence of water upon it. At 6 p.m. Oxley's Table Land was
distant from us about fifteen miles, bearing S. 20 E. by compass.
We had not touched upon the creek from the time we left it in the
morning, having wandered from it in a northerly direction, along a
native path that we intersected, and that seemed to have been recently
trodden, since footsteps were fresh upon it. At sunset, we crossed a
broad dry creek that puzzled us extremely, and were shortly afterwards
obliged to stop for the night upon a plain beyond it. We had, during
the afternoon, bent down to the S.W. in hopes that we should again have
struck upon New Year's Creek; and, under an impression that we could
not be far from it, Mr. Hume and I walked across the plain, to
ascertain if it was sufficiently near to be of any service to us. We
came upon a creek, but could not decide whether it was the one for
which we had been searching, or another.
Its bed was so perfectly even that it was impossible to say to what
point it flowed, more especially as all remains of debris had mouldered
away. It was, however, extremely broad, and evidently, at times, held a
furious torrent. In the centre of it, at one of the angles, we
discovered a pole erected, and at first thought, from the manner in
which it was propped up, that some unfortunate European must have
placed it there as a mark to tell of his wanderings, but we afterwards
concluded that it might be some superstitious rite of the natives, in
consequence of the untowardness of the season, as it seemed almost
inconceivable that an European could have wandered to such a distance
from the located districts in safety.
REACH A LARGE RIVER.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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