The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 Part 9

It was an English feeling, an ebullition, an overflow, which I am ready to admit that our circ.u.mstances and situation will alone excuse. The eve of every native had been fixed upon that n.o.ble flag, at all times a beautiful object, and to them a novel one, as it waved over us in the heart of the desert. They had until that moment been particularly loquacious, but the sight of that flag and the sound of our voices hushed the tumult, and while they were still lost in astonishment, the boat's head was turned, the sail was sheeted home, both wind and current were in our favour, and we vanished from them with a rapidity that surprised even ourselves, and which precluded every hope of the most adventurous among them to keep up with us."

Once Pore down the now united streams of the Murray and the Darling the party made rapid progress, landing occasionally to inspect the country, but finding always a boundless flat on either side of them.

Provisions now began to get scarce with them, the barrels of salt pork that had been in the skiff when she sank in the Morumbidgee had their contents damaged by the admission of the fresh water. The fish, though abundant, were more than unattractive to their palates, and the men took no trouble to set the night lines. The strictest economy had, therefore, to become the order of the day. The skiff being only a drag to them, she was broken up, and burnt for the sake of the nails and iron-work.

On the 24th of January, the whale-boat continued its voyage alone, and the record from day to day was only broken by their intercourse with the different tribes, with whom a regular system of communication was now established. Deputies were sent ahead, from one tribe to another, to prepare them for the visit of the strangers. These deputies, by cutting off the numerous bends of the river, were enabled to travel much quicker than did Sturt, frequently doing easily in one day what it took the boat two to accomplish. Their black friends were, however, becoming rather a nuisance; little or no information could be obtained from them, and the constant handling and embracing, which they had from policy to submit to, became horribly distasteful to all of them, particularly as Sturt describes all the tribes he met with as being beyond the average filthily dirty, and eaten up with skin diseases.

On the 25th, the wanderers thought they sighted a range to the N.W., and the blacks confirmed it, pointing in that direction when Hopkinson piled up some clay in imitation of mountains.

On the 29th, the leader calculated that they were still one hundred and fifteen miles from the coast, and as they had been now twenty-two days on the river, their return began to be a matter for serious thought. From what he saw of the country, Sturt imagined that it was, for the most part, barren and sandy, and would never be utilised. But, of course, he had little or no opportunities, travelling as he did, of forming a correct judgment.

The cliffs on the river bank now showed fossilized sea sh.e.l.ls in their strata; chains of hills, too, became visible, and one of the natives, [This old native, after the settlement of the country, was shot in cold blood by one of the South Australian police.] an old man who had taken a strange fancy to Hopkinson, described the roaring of the sea and the height of the waves, showing that he had visited the coast. None, it may be certain, were more glad than the leader to hear of their proximity, for his thoughts were always busy with the failing condition of his men, and the acc.u.mulating difficulties of his return.

True, it had been partly arranged that a vessel should proceed to the south coast, but Sturt had little hope of meeting her, even if one had been sent. The frequent bends in the river greatly delayed their advance, but they were cheered by the flight of sea-gulls over their heads. The river, too, widened day after day, and a constant strong wind from the S.W., raised a chopping sea that almost stopped their way; the blacks they met all a.s.sured them that the ocean was at hand. On the 9th February, Sturt landing to examine the country, saw before him the lake that terminated the Murray. He had reached his goal, thirty-three days after separating from his party, at the Morumbidgee. Crossing the lake the little band landed on the southern sh.o.r.e, and ascertained that the communication between it and the sea was impracticable on account of its extreme shallowness; they found their position to be in Encounter Bay, east of Spencer's Gulf, and from what they saw it was evident that no s.h.i.+p could enter it during the prevalence of the S.W. winds. All hope of a safe return centred in themselves. The thunder of the surf, that they had so longed for, brought no message of succour, but rather warned the lonely men to hasten back, while yet some strength remained to them; and above all they were surrounded by hostile blacks. Sturt had now a terrible task before him. His men were weakened and on half rations; there was every probability that the fickle natives might be troublesome on their homeward route, and worst of all they would have to fight the steady current of the river the whole way; nor would their spirits be cheered by any hope of novelty or discovery. Under these gloomy auspices Sturt re-entered the Murray on his return on the 13th February.

The homeward journey is simply a record of unrelaxed toil day after day, Sturt and M'Leay taking their turn at the oar like the rest; added to which the blacks gave them far more trouble than before. At the fall above the junction of the Darling they once more met the friend who had saved them from coming into conflict with the natives on the 24th January; he and some of his tribe a.s.sisted them to get the boat up the rapids. On the 20th of March they reached the camp on the Morumbidgee from whence they had started, but it was now abandoned, and the hope that the relief party had pushed down there to meet them was destroyed; there was nothing for it but to pull on, but human nature was rapidly giving way; the men though falling asleep at their oars never grumbled, but worked steadily, if moodily, faithful to their duty to the last. Then the river rose, and for days they struggled vainly against it. One man went mad, and had to be relieved from the oars. At last, when ninety miles from Pontebadgery, the place where Sturt believed the relief party to be camped, he determined to dispatch two men for provisions and await their return.

After six days, when the last ounce of flour had been served out, the men came back with horses and drays, and all trouble was at an end. This was on the 18th April, eighty-eight days after their departure from the depot, during which they had voyaged two thousand miles.

This expedition, from whatever light it is regarded, either as the most important contribution ever made to Australian geography, or as an example of most wonderful endurance, and patient heroism is equally one of the most glorious records in this history. The leader and his men were alike worthy of each other.

We have now had in review the opinion of many men on the future of the great interior, and seen how they all alike predicted for it barrenness and desolation. Even the satisfaction that Sturt felt at accomplis.h.i.+ng the descent of the Murray was qualified by a consideration of the valueless country it flowed through. The question will naturally be asked, how could men of such ability and more than average shrewdness make such a gross mistake as the succeeding years have proved their opinion to be? The princ.i.p.al reason will be found in their want of experience in witnessing the development and improvement of land by stocking, and their ignorance of the value of the vegetation they condemned as worthless. Hume was the only man amongst them exceptionally fitted by training to judge of the capability of the land, and we do not often get at his direct opinion, nor is it likely that, with the memory of the green meadow lands and sparkling waters of the Morumbidgee fresh in his mind, it would be a very favourable one. Oxley and Sturt both wrote smarting under disappointment, and both had been suddenly confronted with a new and strange experience which they could a.s.sociate with nothing but the idea of a desert. That all this seemingly desolate waste should one day have a distinctive value of its own was what they could hardly dream of.

CHAPTER IV.

Settlement at King George's Sound--The free colony of Swan River founded--Governor Stirling--Captain Bannister crosses from Perth to King George's Sound--Explorations by Lieutenant Roe--Disappointing nature of the interior--Bunbury, Wilson, and Moore--Settlement on the North Coast--Melville Island and Raffles Bay--An escaped convict's story--The fabulous Kindur River--Major Mitch.e.l.l starts in search of it--Discovery of the Namoi--The Nundawar Range--Failure of the boats--Reach the Gwydir River of Cunningham--The KARAULA--Its ident.i.ty with the Darling--Murder of the two bullock-drivers--Mitch.e.l.l's return--Murder of Captain Barker in Encounter Bay--Major Mitch.e.l.l's second expedition to trace the course of the Darling--Traces the Bogan to its junction with that river--Fort Bourke--Progress down the river--Hostility of the natives--Skirmish with them--Return--Mitch.e.l.l's third expedition--The Lachlan followed--Junction of the Darling and the Murray reached--Mitch.e.l.l's discovery of Australia Felix.

During the time that Oxley, Sturt, and Hume had been tracing out and painfully discovering the watershed of the Murray, a settlement had been formed at King George's Sound, in Western Australia, and some slight attempts at exploration made, but of inconsiderable extent. The settlement was entrusted to Major Lockyer, who was succeeded by Captain Barker, destined to meet a violent death at the mouth of the Murray. In 1828, Captain Stirling, in the SUCCESS, visited the coast, and made a close examination of the Swan River. He was accompanied by Frazer the botanist, who had now been present at the opening of a great deal of new country. Stirling's report was a favourable one, and the Home Government determined to form a free colony there. In 1831, we find a communication to the Colonial Government, notifying that the ISABELLA be dispatched to Hobart Town, to bring up a detachment of the 63rd regiment to relieve those of the 39th, at King George's Sound. Also, directing the withdrawal from the present settlement of both prisoners and troops.

Stirling was then appointed Lieutenant-Governor, and to induce immigration and settlement, the colonists were promised land in proportion to the capital they brought into the country, and for every labourer they brought out they received two hundred acres of land additional.

At first, the prospects of this new colony seemed most hopeful, exploration was pushed out to the eastward for one hundred miles, as far as Mount Stirling, and northward for some sixty miles or so, and the country discovered gave every promise of being fitted for both pasture and agriculture.

Captain Bannister made a trip in 1831 from Perth, the new settlement, to the old one of King George's Sound; and, although he made no important discoveries, he pa.s.sed through fairly available country nearly the whole of the way.

For some reason or other, however, a period of stagnation set in, and little more was done in the way of exploring until Lieutenant Grey took the field in 1837. In this new settlement, so entirely opposed to Port Jackson in situation, no difficulties of any magnitude were experienced in pa.s.sing the coast range, as had been the great obstacle of the early explorers in New South Wales. Unfortunately, however, the comparatively lower alt.i.tude of the Darling Range led to there being no such flow of water inland as even those disappointing rivers the Macquarie and Lachlan had afforded. Consequently, exploration and the ensuing occupation were, as in the parent colony, strictly confined to the immediate neighbourhood of the towns.h.i.+p, to the Swan River, and its tributaries, the Avon and the Canning.

Lieutenant Roe attempted several journeys to the eastward, and discovered many salt lakes on the tableland of the interior. Messrs. Bunbury, Wilson, and Moore made other explorations, more or less succeeding in the purposes they had in view; but they all embraced so small an area, and so little details have been preserved, that they cannot take any important rank in the history of continental explorations.

During the twenties another settlement had been formed on the northern coast of Australia; but one not destined to drag out a very long existence.

Captain Gordon Bremer, in the TAMAR, accompanied by two transports, sailed through Torres Straits and anch.o.r.ed in Port Essington, in 1824.

The port was, however, at that time condemned as a site for a settlement, the supply of fresh water did not come up to expectations, and the dry months of the year had set in. Bremer sailed for Melville Island, one of twin islands lying off the coast. These islands, Melville and Bathurst, are separated from each other by a narrow strait that Captain King, the discoverer, mistook for a river. On Melville Island a favourable site with abundance of fresh water was found, and the usual routine of taking possession and forming an encampment gone through, and for a time things seemed to prosper; the soil of the island is good, and tropical fruits would flourish with little trouble; but hostilities commenced with the blacks, sickness broke out, and in 1829 it was determined to abandon the settlement, and since that date no attempt has been made to colonise this island, although it is now stocked with the increase of the buffaloes left behind by the TAMAR'S people.

Fort Wellington, in Raffles Bay, founded in 1826, fared no better, although controlled during its last year by the gifted and unfortunate Captain Barker. A blight of stagnation seemed in those days to hang over all attempts at settlement in the tropical regions, and in three years'

time Fort Wellington was abandoned, and with it the northern coast.

Once more we must turn our attention to the southern watershed of the Darling, and the additional links of discovery in the great network of its tributaries.

Rumour, always busy with tales of the unknown interior, now spread a story of a mysterious river called the Kindur, running to the north-west.

A runaway convict named Clarke, alias "the barber," brought the story up first. He said that he had long heard of the river from the natives, and at last determined to make his escape and follow it down to see if it would lead him to any other country. He, therefore, took to the bush, and started on this adventurous trip. The imaginative and highly-coloured fabrication that he related on his return, was probably invented in order to save his back, but at any rate it was plausible enough to induce the Government to dispatch an expedition to investigate the matter. This was his story. He started from Liverpool Plains, and followed a river called by the natives the GNAMOI or NAMMOY, into which he said that Oxley's river Peel flowed. Crossing this he struck another river, the KINDUR, and down this stream he travelled no less than four hundred miles before it was joined by the GNAMOI. Nothing daunted he stuck to the KINDUR, which was broad and navigable, flowing through level country and spreading into occasional lakes, until at last he reached the sea, but he acknowledged that he had lost his reckoning, and whether it was five hundred or five thousand miles he went he could not truthfully say, but he was as quite sure upon one point, that he had never travelled south of west.

When at the mouth of the river he ascended a hill and looked out to sea where he saw an island, inhabited, the natives told him, by copper-coloured men who came in large canoes to the mainland for scented wood. In addition he introduced various details of large plains, BALYRAN, that he had crossed, and a burning mountain named COURADA. As he saw no prospect of getting away from Australia, Clarke decided on returning.

This wild tale, and the expedition it led to, brings on the scene one of the most noted figures of the past, Oxley's successor, Surveyor-General Major Mitch.e.l.l.

The Acting-Governor, Sir Patrick Lindesay, decided on sending out an expedition to find out the truth of this story, thinking that, at any rate, it would lead to the exploration of a great deal of new country.

Accordingly, Major Mitch.e.l.l received instructions to take charge of the party, and on the 21St of November, 1831, took his departure from Liverpool Plains. On the 15th of December, he came to the Peel, and crossing Oxley's Hardwicke Range, reached the Namoi River on the 16th.

After penetrating some distance into a range, which he called the Nundawar Range, he made back for the Namoi, and proceeded to set up the canvas boats he had with him, intending to try to follow the river in them. His attempt was fruitless, one of the boats was soon snagged, and it became evident that it would be much easier to follow the Namoi on horseback. Leaving the river, after pa.s.sing the range he had vainly tried to cross, Mitch.e.l.l, on the 9th of January, 1832, came to the river Gwydir of Cunningham. Turning to the westward the party followed this river down for eighty miles, when he again returned to his northern course, and came to the largest river he had yet found. This was called, by the natives, the KARAULA, and Mitch.e.l.l descended it until convinced, by its southern course and the junction of the Gwydir, that he was on the upper part of Sturt's Darling.

As the junction of the Namoi could not be far distant, Mitch.e.l.l had thus laid down the course and direction of these two large rivers, although he had as yet seen nothing of the object of his search, the Kindur.

He now prepared to move once more to the north, anxious to find a river that did not belong to the Darling system. As, however, he was on the point of starting, he was overtaken by his a.s.sistant-surveyor, Finch, who was bringing on additional supplies, with the disastrous news that the blacks had attacked his camp during a temporary absence, murdered the two men, robbed the supplies, and dispersed the cattle. This misfortune put a stop to the progress of the party. They returned, and having buried the bodies of the victims, but failed to find the murderers, made their way back to the settled districts.

This journey of Major Mitch.e.l.l's helped greatly to work out the courses of the rivers crossed by Oxley, and more especially those discovered by Cunningham during his trip to the Darling Downs. Mitch.e.l.l travelled, as it were, a more inland but parallel track, crossing the rivers much lower down. Thus the Field River of Oxley is the NAMOI of Mitch.e.l.l, Cunningham's Gwydir is recognised by the Surveyor-General, and is probably the mythical KINDUR or KEINDER, whilst the last found river, Mitch.e.l.l's KARAULA, is formed by the junction of Cunningham's Dumaresque and Condamine.

When we add to this the discovery of the Drummond Range, Mitch.e.l.l's first contribution to Australian geography was sufficiently important.

This year, 1832, was marked by the murder of Captain Barker, already mentioned as in turn Commandant of Fort Wellington and King George's Sound. He was returning from the latter place, after handing over charge to Captain Stirling, and on his way home landed on the eastern sh.o.r.e of St. Vincent's Gulf, to see if the waters of Lake Alexandrina, the termination of the Murray, had an outlet in the Gulf. Being unsuccessful he crossed the range and paid a visit to the lake. Anxious to obtain some bearings, he swam across the channel connecting the lake with the sea in order to ascend the sandhills on the opposite side. His companions watched him take several bearings from the top of the hill, descend out of view on the other side, and he was never seen again. One of the sealers from Kangaroo Island interrogated the blacks by means of a native woman of the island, who could speak broken English, and her account was that Barker met three natives as he descended the sand dune, who attacked and speared him, unarmed and naked as he was, and then cast his body in the breakers. These natives were of the same tribes that showed such determined hostility to Sturt when he first found the lake.

Although Sturt himself felt confident that the junction of the Murray and Darling were satisfactorily proved by what he saw on his famous boat excursion, he had not convinced all of the public. Major Mitch.e.l.l, for one, had an entirely different theory on the subject embracing the existence of a. dividing range between the Macquarie and Lachlan rivers which would entirely preclude the Darling and Murray from joining.

Time, however, proved that Sturt's instinct had not been at fault when on reaching the junction of the two rivers in his whale-boat, he felt convinced that he there saw the outflow of his old friend, the Darling.

It must be remembered that the explorations conducted by Major Mitch.e.l.l were also surveys, superintended by him as Surveyor-General, which will partly explain the presence of the large body of men and equipage which it was his custom to take with him. The roll call of the members of one of his expeditions reads like that of an invading army. [See Appendix.]

In order to get some additional information concerning the elevated country that Oxley had noticed to the westward between the Lachlan and the Macquarie (on which slight foundation Major Mitch.e.l.l had built his theory of the two rivers running through distinctly different basins), Mr. Dixon was sent out in 1833. This gentleman, however, for some reason did not adhere to his instructions; he followed down the Macquarie for some distance and crossed to the Bogan (Sturt's New Year's Creek), then running strong, and having followed that river for sixty-seven miles, returned to Bathurst; nothing new nor important came of this expedition.

In March, 1833, the party formed under the superintendence of the Surveyor-General left Parramatta to travel by easy stages to Buree, where they were to be overtaken by their leader. The list of the members is a long one. We who live in the days of well-equipped small parties, composed of reliable, experienced men only, would feel considerably handicapped with such a retinue. In addition to Major Mitch.e.l.l, Richard Cunningham, botanist (brother to Allan Cunningham), and Mr. Larmer, a.s.sistant surveyor, there were twenty-one men; carpenters, bullock drivers, blacksmith, shoemaker, &c.

While still on the outskirts of settlement, an unhappy fate overtook Cunningham, the botanist. Leaving the party, doubtless on some scientific quest, during the morning of the 17th of April, whilst they were pus.h.i.+ng over a dry stage to the Bogan River, he lost his way, and was never seen again.

A long and painful search was immediately inst.i.tuted for the missing man, but unfortunately, through some accident, his tracks were overlooked on the third day, and it was not until the 23rd of the month that the footsteps were found. Mr. Larmer and three men were sent with an ample supply of provisions to follow the tracks until they found Cunningham, alive or dead. Three days later they returned, having found the horse he had ridden, dead, with the saddle and bridle still on. Mitch.e.l.l returned to the search once more; the lost man's trail was again picked up, and he was tracked to the Bogan River. They there met with some blacks who had seen the white man's track in the bed of the river, and made the searchers understand that he had gone to the west with the "Myall" [Wild blacks who had not visited the settlements.] blackfellows.

All hope of finding him alive was now almost abandoned, but the pursuit was continued until May 5th, when the men brought back tidings that they had followed his tracks to where it disappeared near some recent fires where many natives had been encamped. Close to one of these fires they found a portion of the skirt or selvage of Cunningham's coat, numerous small fragments of his map of the colony, and, in the hollow of a tree, some yellow printed paper in which he used to carry the map. His fate was afterwards ascertained from the blacks. [ See Appendix.]

As is unfortunately so usual in these cases, Cunningham had, by wandering in eccentric and contradictory courses, accelerated his fate, by rendering the work of the tracking party so much more tedious and difficult. Had he, on finding how absolutely he was astray, remained at the first water he reached, he would have been found.

Having done all that man could do to find his lost friend, and even jeopardised the final success of his own expedition by the long delay of fourteen days, Mitch.e.l.l resumed his journey by easy stages down the Bogan, and on the 25th of May reached the Darling, which was at once recognised by all the former members of the party as the "Karaula," from the peculiar attributes that characterised it. On tasting the water, they were agreeably surprised to find it fresh and sweet. The state of the country now was very different from what it was when Sturt was forced to retreat. With that explorer's graphic account of the barren solitude that he met with, fresh in the reader's memory, let him contrast it with what Mitch.e.l.l writes, remembering that one was encamped beside a salt stream, and the latter writer beside a fresh water river.

"We were extremely fortunate, however, in the place to which the bounteous hand of Providence had led us. Abundance of pasture, indeed such excellent gra.s.s as we had not seen in the whole journey, covered the fine forest ground on the bank of the river. There were four kinds, but the cattle appeared to relish most a strong species of AUTHISTIRIA, or kangaroo gra.s.s."