- Being much recovered, I took both Blackfellows with me, and
again passed the defile east of Roper's and Scott's Peaks, and followed
the watercourse rising from it to the northward.
About two or three miles
lower down, we found water in deep rocky basins in the bed of the creek.
The rock was sandstone, fissured from south-west to north-east.
In passing the foot of the peaks, we found a species of Grewia (Dwarf
Roorajong) covered with ripe fruit; the fruit is dry, but the stringy
tissue which covers the seed, contains a slightly sweet and acidulous
substance of a very agreeable taste. The fig-tree with a rough leaf, had
plenty of fruit, but not yet ripe. Erythrina was both in blossom and in
seed.
Sending Brown back to conduct our party to the water-holes we had found,
and leaving the creek, which turned to the eastward, I continued my ride
to the northward. I passed some gentle well-grassed slopes of
narrow-leaved Ironbark and spotted gum; and also several basaltic ridges,
which head out into small plains gently sloping to the east and
north-east. They are formed of a rich black soil, and generally a shallow
creek meanders through them: sandstone ridges formed their boundary lower
down, where, at their foot, water-holes generally existed, either with a
constant supply of water, or readily filled by thunder-showers. The
basaltic ridges, as well as the plains, were covered with a fine crop of
dry grass; but the sandstone ridges were frequently scrubby.
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