The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 Part 10

Finding the place eligible in every respect for the formation of a depot, a stockade of logs was erected and the encampment christened Fort Bourke.

The boats were launched, but the navigation of the river was found to be impeded by shallow rapids, so the party returned to Fort Bourke, and Mitch.e.l.l with four men made an excursion down the river to the point where Sturt and Hume turned back. D'Urbans group was also 'Visited, and bearings taken to whatever elevations were in sight. On returning to the depot the camp was broken up and the whole party started down the Darling (the CALLA-WATTA of the natives) on the 8th June. During their progress they found the tree marked H. H. by Hume, at Sturt's limit, and they now noticed that in places the river water was salt or brackish. On the 11th of July, after following the course of the river for three hundred miles, and ascertaining beyond all doubt that it must be identical with the junction in the Murray, noticed by Captain Sturt, Mitch.e.l.l determined to return; the unvarying sameness of the country they had travelled over holding forth no hope of any important discovery being made, in the s.p.a.ce intervening between their lowest camp and Sturt's junction. The natives, too, had been an incessant cause of annoyance to them; robbing the camp at every opportunity, and keeping the leader in constant anxiety for the safety of any of the members of his party, whom duty compelled to leave the main body. On the very day, almost at the very hour, when Mitch.e.l.l made up his mind to return, the first hostile collision between the two races occurred; a collision which had only been hitherto averted by the admirable patience of the Major and his men. On the 29th June, he wrote:--

"I never saw such unfavourable specimens of the aborigines as these children of the smoke, [Referring to their constant habit of burning the gra.s.s.] they were so barbarously and implacably hostile, and shamelessly dishonest, and so little influenced by reason that the more they saw of our superior weapons and means of defence, the more they showed their hatred and tokens of defiance."

On the morning of this day, when he had settled in his own mind the futility of further progress, two of the men were away at the river, and five of the the bullock drivers were also at another bend, collecting their cattle. One of the blacks whom they had nick-named King Peter tried to s.n.a.t.c.h the kettle of water from the hand of the man who was carrying it; and on being resisted he struck him senseless with his nulla-nulla.

The companion of the wounded man shot King Peter in the groin, and his majesty tumbled into the river and swam across. The tribe now advanced against them, and two shots were fired in self defence, one of which accidentally wounded a gin. Three men from the camp hearing the firing came up, and one more native was shot, who was preparing to spear one of the men. The natives retreating, the men went in search of the bullock-drivers, whom they found endeavouring to raise a bogged bullock: their timely arrival probably saved these men's lives, as they were unarmed and unprepared.

War being thus declared, a careful watch was kept up, but no attack was made, and the explorers departed unmolested.

In speaking of this skirmish, Mitch.e.l.l, seemingly worked up to a sentimental pitch by hearing some gins crying out across the river in the night time, says:--

"It was then that I regretted most bitterly the inconsiderate conduct of some of the men. I was indeed liable to pay dear for geographical discovery, when my honour and character were delivered over to convicts, on whom, although I might confide as to courage, I could not always rely for humanity."

By his own account, as given above, the affray was provoked by the blacks, who compelled the men to use their weapons to save their own lives; the reflections then, on their humanity, and the danger in which his character stood in consequence, are slightly out of place.

The travellers now retraced their steps, and beyond the delays caused by some of the bullocks knocking up, their return journey to Fort Bourke was unmarked by anything of interest. From Fort Bourke they returned, partly along their outward track, to the head of the Bogan, and reached a newly-formed cattle station belonging to Mr. Lee, of Bathurst, on the 9th of September.

The great fact added to the geographical knowledge of Australia by the successful termination of this trip, was the ident.i.ty of the Darling with the KARAULA on the north, and with Sturt's Murray junction on the south.

It was now satisfactorily settled that this river was the channel that received all the tributary streams flowing westward--so far north, at any rate, as Cunningham's researches had extended, and that therefore their final outlet was in Lake Alexandrina, and the idea of a river winding through the interior to the north-west coast had to be finally relinquished.

This journey of Mitch.e.l.l's was also instrumental in somewhat palliating the view held of the uninhabitable nature of the far interior; although the true character of the country had yet to be learnt and appreciated.

His stay on the banks of the Darling at least lifted from those plains the stigma of a gra.s.sless, naked waste, intersected by a river of brine.

Mitch.e.l.l, too, was a keen observer of the habits and customs of the blacks, he was remarkably quick at detecting tribal differences and distinctions, and his record of his intercourse with them, which occupies so large a portion of his journals, was interesting then, when so little had been written on the subject, and is interesting now as the account of the white man's first incursions into the hunting ground of a fast vanis.h.i.+ng race.

Mitch.e.l.l's next expedition took place in 1836, in the month of March. As before, it was to be more of a connecting survey, confirming and verifying previous discoveries, than a fresh departure into an utterly new region; but it turned out to be productive of the most important results.

The Surveyor-General was informed that the survey of the Darling was to be completed with the least possible delay, that having returned to the point where his last journey terminated, he was to trace the Darling into the Murray, and crossing his party over that river by means of his boats, follow it up, and regain the colony somewhere at Ya.s.s Plains. This programme was, however, departed from in many ways.

The new ground broken by Mitch.e.l.l would thus be the Murray River above the junction with the Morumbidgee or Murrumbidgee, as it was now called, and it was supposed that he would be able to identify it with the Hume River of the explorer of that name.

A long continued drought was in full force when Mitch.e.l.l commenced his preparations; horses and bullocks in good condition were in consequence hard to obtain; but no expense was spared by the Government in providing the animals required. On reaching Bathurst, he was informed that even the Lachlan was dry.

In spite of the state of the weather and country, Major Mitch.e.l.l departed in high spirits. He writes:--

"I remembered that exactly that morning, twenty-four years before, I had marched down the glacis of Elvas to the tune of 'St. Patrick's Day in the Morning,' as the sun rose over the beleagured towers of Badajoz. Now, without any of the 'pride, pomp, and circ.u.mstances of glorious war,' I was proceeding on a service not very likely to be peaceful, for the natives here a.s.sured me that the myalls were coming up 'murry coola'

[Very angry.] to meet us."

On March 17th, 1836, this start took place, but it was not until the end of the month that he reached the limit of the cattle stations, and then he was at the point where Oxley had left the river and turned south to avoid the flooded marshes. Oxley wrote of a country that no living thing would stop in if it could possibly get away; twenty years afterwards, Mitch.e.l.l writes of the same place:--

"In no district have I seen cattle so numerous as all along the Lachlan, and, notwithstanding the very dry season, they are nearly all in good condition."

As might have been expected, he followed down the Lachlan riding dry-shod over the swamps and flats that had barred Oxley's progress, and finding his lakes only green and gra.s.sy plains. Such had been the effect of the exceptional season during which the late Surveyor-General had conducted his explorations, that the country, save for the few land-marks afforded by the hills here and there, could scarcely be recognised from his description. Mitch.e.l.l seems to have been strongly imbued with two leading ideas, one being the existence of well-defined mountain chains in the interior, forming systematic watersheds in a country where we now know there is no system; the other that former explorers, however reliable they might have been in their main facts, were quite at sea in any deductions they had drawn from them, and that his theories would be confirmed to their discomfiture.

The Surveyor-General had with him as second on this trip, Mr. Stapylton, a surveyor, and his company consisted of Burnett, the overseer, and twenty-two men, some of whom had been with him before.

For some reason or other he seemed particularly anxious to upset Sturt's positive belief that the junction of the large river with the Murray discovered by him, was the confluence of the Darling and the Murray.

During his journey down the Lachlan he returns to this idea again, and his remarks are decidedly inconsistent with his former statements. On turning back from following the Darling down, his words were:--

"The ident.i.ty of this river with that which had been seen to enter the Murray, now admitted of little doubt, and the continuation of the survey to that point was scarcely an object worth the peril likely to attend it."

On the Lachlan, he writes:--

"I considered it necessary now to ascertain, if possible, and before the heavy part of our equipment moved further, whether the Lachlan actually joined the Murrumbidgee near the point where Mr. Oxley saw its waters covering the country, or whether it pursued a course so much more to the westward, as to have been taken for the Darling by Captain Sturt. Should I succeed in reaching the Lachlan at about sixty miles west of my camp, I might be satisfied that it was this river which Captain Sturt mistook for the Darling, and then I might seek that river by crossing the range on the north. Whereas, should I find sufficient reason to believe that the Darling would join the Murray, I might continue my journey down the Lachlan until I reduced the distance across to the Darling as much as the scarcity of water might render necessary."

On the whole, then, Mitch.e.l.l did not seem inclined to give Sturt any credit for his discovery, until he had actually seen the two rivers unite, and there could no longer be any room for doubt on the subject.

A long excursion to the westward for some days, resulted in nothing but thirsty nights, and having finally to turn back from country bounded only by an unbroken horizon. The descent of the Lachlan was continued, and on May 5th, they reached Oxley's lowest point on the river, where he had given up the quest as hopeless amid the shallow, stagnant lagoons that then covered the face of the country. The tree marked by Oxley himself was not found, it having been, as was ascertained, burnt down by the blacks, and the bottle buried by him, broken by a child. Two trees were seen marked respectively W.W. and I.W., 1817. This was the place where Oxley left the river the second time, after his fruitless trip to the south, and from here he struck across to the Macquarie.

Through level plains and by the beds of erstwhile lakes, the course of the river continued, and as the party proceeded they found it abundantly watered. From his intercourse with the native inhabitants, Mitch.e.l.l was now convinced that the Lachlan or Kalare would soon join the Murrumbidgee, so that when on the 12th May he suddenly found himself on the banks of a river that he thought surpa.s.sed all the Australian rivers he had yet seen, he was not surprised.

Soon afterwards, as the Major was anxious not to enc.u.mber himself with all his heavy waggons to the junction of the Darling, as he would have to return again, a depot was formed, and the men divided. Mitch.e.l.l, with a lightly equipped party following down the river, leaving Stapylton in charge of the camp.

In a short time the advance party came to the Murray, and immediately found themselves amongst their former enemies of the Darling, who hearing of their approach, through the medium of other tribes, had come a distance of over two hundred miles to settle the old score between them.

At first a kind of hollow truce was maintained, but this evidently could not last long; for two days the natives followed the explorers, seeking to cut off any stragglers; making the work of gathering and minding the cattle and horses one of considerable danger.

At last Mitch.e.l.l was convinced that he must read them a lesson, or lose some of his men, and have to fight his way back, with the whole country roused. Half the party were then sent back, under the overseer, to conceal themselves in the scrub and allow the natives to pa.s.s on in pursuit of the tracks; this ambuscade, however, was scented out by the dogs accompanying the blacks, and the natives halted, poising their spears. One of the men hastily fired, and a retreat was made for the bank of the river by the blacks. The scrub party followed them up firing, and no sooner did those in advance hear the sound of the shots, than they rushed down to join in the fray, leaving the black boy's gin the sole protector of the drays, and equipment. On his return, the Major found her standing erect at the head of the leading horse, with a drawn sword over her shoulder.

Her appearance was, above all, both laughable and interesting. She was a tall, gaunt woman, with one disfigured eye, and her att.i.tude, as she stood there with the naked weapon in her hand, faithful guard of all their belongings, was a picture that Mitch.e.l.l did not soon forget.

The fight was soon over; in a very short s.p.a.ce of time the over-confident warriors of the interior were driven ignominously across the river with the loss of seven braves. This, after invading the territory of a friendly tribe in order to provoke a battle with the whites, and boasting that formerly they had driven them back from the Darling, was a blow that they could not get over, and the result was that the whites were not again molested. It turned out that this pugnacious tribe was the same that threatened Sturt at the Darling junction, when the energetic interference of one man was so effectual. This remarkable savage, it seems, was dead and his influence lost.

On the 31st May, Mitch.e.l.l struck the Darling some distance above the junction, and traced its course upwards a short way, until he again felt convinced that it was the same river that he had been on before, He returned and examined the junction, which he says he recognised from the view given in Captain Sturt's work [Note, end of paragraph] and the adjacent localities described by him. Full of anxiety for the safety of his depot, and considering that he had done enough to verify the outflow of the Darling, he at once started up the Murray, and was happily relieved by finding his camp in perfect quiet and safety.

[Note Captain Sturt, writing in 1848, and speaking of Major Mitch.e.l.l's expedition, says:--"In due time he came to the disputed junction, which he tells us he recognised from its resemblance to a drawing of it in my first work. As I have since been on the spot, I am sorry to say that it is not at all like the place, because it obliges me to reject the only praise Sir Thomas Mitch.e.l.l ever gave me." The original sketch of the junction having been lost, Sturt, who was nearly blind at the time of the publication of his work, got the a.s.sistance of a friend, who drew it from his verbal description.]

First fixing the junction of the Murray and Murrumbidgee, the boats were launched, and the whole of the party crossed the Murray, and the journey up the southern bank commenced. On the 20th of June, they reached Swan Hill and camped at the foot of it. The country was in every way desirable, and the progress of the party was unchecked. On the 8th of July, the Loddon was discovered and named, and on the 10th, the Avoca.

Mitch.e.l.l was now convinced that he had found the Eden of Australia, and his enthusiasm in describing it is unbounded. On the 18th of July, he discovered the Wimmera, and on the 31st, the Glenelg. Here he launched his boat once more, but found his way stopped at the outset by a fall, and the river had to be followed on land. On the 18th of August, after many excursions, the river being now much broader, the boats were again resorted to, and in two days they reached the coast a little to the east of Cape Northumberland.

Returning to the camp, the expedition made east, and reached Portland Bay, where they found a farm established by the Messrs. Henty, who had been there then nearly two years. Here they obtained some small supplies, and again left on their homeward journey. On the 4th September Mitch.e.l.l abandoned one of his boats, in order to lighten his equipage, as the draught work was excessively heavy for his cattle, and one boat would answer the purpose of crossing rivers. On the 10th, he caught sight of a range, and named it the Australian Pyrenees, and on the 19th the party separated.

The Major and some of the men pushed on with the freshest of the animals, leaving Stapylton and the remainder of the party to spell for a while, and bring the knocked-up beasts slowly on.

On the 30th, Mitch.e.l.l ascended Mount Macedon, and from the top recognised Port Phillip.