Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia Volume I Part 22

We had pa.s.sed through valleys, on first descending from the mountains, where the yellow oat-gra.s.s (or Anthisteria) resembled a ripe crop of grain. But this resemblance to the emblem of plenty made the desolation of these hopeless solitudes only the more apparent, abandoned as they then were alike by man, beast, and bird. No living thing remained in these valleys, for water, that element so essential to life, was a want too obvious in the dismal silence (for not an insect hummed) and the yellow hues of withering vegetation.

We had at length emerged from these arid valleys, and entered upon an open and more promising country. Our boats and heavily laden carts had crossed all the mountains in our way without any accident, and we had water in abundance.

It is on occasions such as these that the adventurer has intervals of enjoyment which amply reward him for laborious days of hards.h.i.+p and privation. The sense of gratification and repose is intense in such extreme cases, and cannot be known to him whose life is counted out in a monotonous succession of hours of eating and sleeping within a house; whose food is adulterated by spices, and sauces, intolerable to real hunger--and whose drink, instead of the sweet refres.h.i.+ng distillation from the heavens, consists of vile artificial extracts, loathed by the really thirsty man with whom the pure element resumes its true value, and establishes its real superiority over every artificial beverage.

ASCEND MOUNT JUSON WITH MR. CUNNINGHAM.

April 11.

At seven o'clock I proceeded with Mr. Cunningham to the summit of a cone, bare of timber, which I had observed from the Can.o.bolas, and which bore 138 degrees east of north from our camp, distant about six miles. The ascent was easy, and from the summit (on which Mr. Cunningham obligingly erected a pyramid) I obtained many valuable angles with my theodolite on the very distant hills which broke the western horizon. We found the variation of the needle to be 8 degrees 40 minutes East. This hill I named, at Mr. Cunningham's request, Mount Juson.

ENTER THE VALLEY OF THE GOOBANG.

We returned to the camp at half-past two, when we found the party ready to start; and accordingly we proceeded forward. Our journey was through verdant vales, increasing in width as we followed the channel of the stream we had traced from the mountain, and which now contained abundant pools of water.

MEET THE NATIVES.

At length the sound of the native's hatchet was heard, and one came forward to meet me. We learned from him that we were upon Buranbil creek, and that its course was south-west towards the Calare, or Lachlan. The range whence we came they called Warre (Croker's range of Oxley) and that north of it Goobang (Harvey's range of the same) from which, as I was also informed, a creek of similar name issued and flowed into the Buranbil.

The evening was beautiful; the new gra.s.s springing in places where it had been burnt presented a s.h.i.+ning verdure in the rays of the descending sun; the songs of the birds accorded here with other joyous sounds, the very air seemed alive with the music of animated nature, so different was the scene in this well-watered valley from that of the parched and silent region from which we had just descended.

SOCIAL ENCAMPMENT.

The natives whom we met here were fine-looking men, enjoying contentment and happiness within the precincts of their native woods. Their enjoyment seemed derived so directly from nature that it almost excited a feeling of regret that civilised men, enervated by luxury and all its concomitant diseases, should ever disturb the haunts of these rude but happy beings.

The first native who came up to me was a fine specimen of man in an independent state of nature. He had nothing artificial about him save the badge of mourning for the dead, a white band (his was very white) around his brow. His manner was grave, his eye keen and intelligent, and as our people were encamping he seemed to watch the moment when they wanted fire, and presented a burning stick which one of the natives had brought, in a manner expressive of welcome, and an unaffected wish to contribute to our wants. At a distance their gins sat at fires, and we heard the domestic sound of squalling children. The scene a.s.sumed a more romantic character when:

like a queen came forth the lovely moon From the slow opening curtains of the clouds, Walking in beauty to her midnight throne,*

and the soft notes of The Doctor's flute fell pleasingly on the ear while the eye was equally gratified by the moonbeams as they shot from the trees, amid the curling smoke of our temporary encampment. The cattle were refres.h.i.+ng in green pastures. It was Sat.u.r.day night, and next day the party was to rest. We had reached in one month, from Sydney, the plains leading to the Darling, having placed all the mountain ranges behind us, and these reflections heightened our enjoyment of the scene around us, and sweetened our repose.

(*Footnote. Croly's Gems.)

April 12.

Accompanied by Mr. Cunningham and three men carrying my theodolite, s.e.xtant, and barometer, I ascended a summit at the southern extremity of Harvey's range, and which I had observed particularly from Mount Juson as being the most eligible point to form, in connection with that range, a base for extending the survey westward. This hill was clear of timber and, as it commanded an uninterrupted view in that direction, I intersected every point observed from Mount Juson. The highest summit of Can.o.bolas was just visible over the intermediate ranges and, what was also of equal importance, that of the Coutombals. These ranges, already mentioned in another place, consist of a group of lofty hills situated about 12 miles to the South-South-West of Wellington valley and, being connected with the general survey, enabled me here to fix this station correctly.

MOUNT LAIDLEY. SPRINGS ON THE SURFACE OF THE PLAINS UNDER CROKER'S RANGE.

As we returned across the lower country towards our camp we observed some places unusually green, and found that this verdure was nourished by springs, the water lying on the surface so that in a season when the beds of almost all streams were dry we watered our horses on an extensive flat of forest land. Such springs must be of very rare occurrence in this country, for in the course of my journeys I had never before seen any.

The hill thus connected with the survey I named Mount Laidley.

CROSS GOOBANG CREEK.

April 13.

The party moved off at half-past eight o'clock, and at half-past nine it crossed Goobang creek, or chain of ponds. This channel contained some deep pools, apparently proof against the summer drought. The Goobang has its sources in the ravines between Harvey's and Croker's ranges, the course being towards the Lachlan. In this and other tributaries of the same river I observed that all the permanent pools were surrounded by reeds.

As we proceeded beyond the Goobang, chiefly in a north-west direction, we found the country tolerably level and to consist of what in the colony is termed open forest land. We crossed one or two eminences, but the carts met with no impediment in a journey of fifteen miles.

The princ.i.p.al hill consisted of traprock, and was so naked that only one or two trees of the Sterculia heterophylla grew upon it. The native name for it was Pakormungor, and from its top I recognised Mounts Juson and Laidley, and near me various low features which I had intersected from those stations. The rock, in other places less elevated, consisted of schist or slate in laminae, dipping to the east at an angle of 60 degrees. Some very rich ironstone also occurred on the surface.

THE DOGS KILL THREE LARGE KANGAROOS.

This day three large kangaroos were killed by our dogs, one of them having been speared very adroitly during the chase by a native who accompanied us from our last encampment.

From Pakormungor the country began to decline to the northward and, as we descended into the basin of the Bogan, it improved in gra.s.s. The Acacia pendula occurring here reminded me of the banks of the Namoi; and Mr.

Cunningham had a busy day in examining many interesting plants which he had not previously seen on this journey.

We at length encamped on a lagoon to which the natives led us, and which they named Cookopie.

WILD HONEY BROUGHT BY THE NATIVES.

We were now in a land flowing with honey, for our friendly guides, with their new tomahawks, extracted it in abundance from the hollow branches of the trees, and it seemed that, in the proper season, they could find it almost everywhere. To such inexpert clowns, as they probably thought us, the honey and the bees were inaccessible, and indeed invisible, save only when the natives cut the former out, and brought it to us in little sheets of bark, thus displaying a degree of ingenuity and skill in supplying wants which we, with all our science, could not hope to attain.

Their plan was to catch a bee, and attach to it, with some resin or gum, the light down of a swan or owl; thus laden the bee would make for its nest in the branch of some lofty tree, and so betray its store of sweets to its keen-eyed pursuers, whose bee-chase presented, indeed, a laughable scene.

April 14.

We continued in a west or south-west direction, pa.s.sing Goonigal,* a large plain on our right, near which there was a fine tract of open forest land. The ground afterwards rose in gentle undulations, and was covered with kangaroo gra.s.s;** the soil changing also from clay to a red sandy loam.

(*Footnote. This we found afterwards to be the native term for any plain.)

(**Footnote. Anthisteria australis.)

We next arrived at a creek, or chain of deep ponds, called Coogoorderoy, which appeared to come from the south-south-west. Further on we pa.s.sed plains on our left of the same name; and at length we crossed a fine one, the native name of which was Turangenoo. On the skirt of it was a hill named Boorr, which we kept close on our left, crossing its lower extremities, which were covered with a forest of ironbark eucalyptus, and forest oaks or casuarinae.

ARRIVE AT TANDOGO.

At four o'clock we reached Tandogo, a fine creek of water descending from the south, and flowing to the Bogan.

A hill to the north-west, I was informed, was named the Bugamel.

ALLAN'S WATER OF OXLEY.

April 15.

I halted to lay down my survey, and connect it with that of Mr. Dixon of the Bogan. At noon I found our lat.i.tude to be 32 degrees 45 minutes 30 seconds South and on making allowance for the difference between Mr.

Oxley's base (as to longitude) and my own, I supposed we were then upon Allan's Water of Oxley.

ADVANTAGE OF ABORIGINAL NAMES ON MAPS.

In this instance, as in many others, the great convenience of using native names is obvious. For instance, so long as any of the aborigines can be found in the neighbourhood of Tandogo, future travellers may verify my map. Whereas new names are of no use in this respect, especially when given to rivers or watercourses by travellers who have merely crossed them without ascertaining their course, or even their sources, or termination. He alone should be ent.i.tled to give a name to a river who explored its course or, at least, as much of it as may be a useful addition to geography; and when a traveller takes the trouble to determine the true place of hills or other features he might perhaps be at liberty to name them also. The covering a map with names of rivers or hills crossed or pa.s.sed merely in traversing an unknown country, amounts to little more than saying that so many hills and rivers were seen there; and if nothing were ascertained further of the connections of the former, or the courses of the latter, we derive from such maps little more information than we had before; for that hills and rivers are to be seen in any unknown part of a country is generally understood to be the case before a traveller commences his journey. A future explorer determines with much trouble the position of a river in the world's map. "This is my river B---," says the man who crossed it first, or who, by merely stumbling perhaps upon it, claims all the merit of its DISCOVERY, even when circ.u.mstances may have forced him to proceed in that direction, rather than that he was looking for what he found under the guidance of any a.n.a.logy, or series of observations.

In the afternoon I rode back to the hill of Boorr (seven miles) with the theodolite, and I obtained some useful angles to various points of Harvey's range, and on such few eminences as could be distinguished in other directions.

EXCURSION WITH MR. CUNNINGHAM.

April 16.