Thermometer At Sunrise
51 Degrees (60 Degrees In The Water); A Cloudless Sky.
Mr. Hodgson and
Charley, whom I had sent to seek John and Caleb, returned to the camp
with a kangaroo.
I sent them immediately off again, with Mr. Roper, to
find the two unfortunate people, whose absence gave me the greatest
anxiety. Mr. Roper and Mr. Gilbert had brought one pigeon and one duck,
as a day's sport; which, with the kangaroo, gave us a good and desirable
supper of animal food. During the evening and the night, a short
bellowing noise was heard, made probably by kangaroos, of which Mr.
Gilbert stated he had seen specimens standing nine feet high. Brown
brought a carpet snake, and a brown snake with yellow belly. The flies
become very numerous, but the mosquitoes are very rare.
On a botanical excursion I found a new Loranthus, with flat linear
leaves, on Casuarina, a new species of Scaevola, Buttneria, and three
species of Solanum. Mr. Hodgson brought a shrubby Goodenia; another
species with linear leaves, and with very small yellow blossoms, growing
on moist places in the forest; two shrubby Compositae; three different
species of Dodonaea, entering into fruit; and a Stenochilus, R. Br. with
red blossoms, the most common little shrub of the forest.
Mr. Gilbert brought me a piece of coal from the crossing place of the
creek of the 10th October. It belongs probably to the same layer which is
found at Flagstone Creek, on Mr. Leslie's station, on Darling Downs. We
find coal at the eastern side of the Coast Range, from Illawarra up to
Wide Bay, with sandstone; and it seems that it likewise extends to the
westward of the Coast Range, being found, to my knowledge, at Liverpool
Plains, at Darling Downs, and at Charley's Creek, of the 10th Oct. It is
here, as well as at the east side, connected with sandstone. Flint
pebbles, of a red colour, were very abundant at Charley's Creek, and in
the scrub, which I called the Flourspill, as it had made such a heavy
inroad into our flour-bags. The flat on which we encamp, is composed of a
mild clay, which rapidly absorbs the rain and changes into mud; a layer
of stiff clay is about one foot below the surface. The grasses are at
present in full ear, and often four feet high; but the tufts are distant,
very different from the dense sward at the other side of the Range. As we
left the Myal country of the Condamine, we left also its herbage,
abounding in composite, leguminous, and chenopodiaceous plants, with a
great variety of grasses.
Oct. 20. - This morning, at half-past nine o'clock, Messrs. Roper,
Hodgson, and Charley, returned with John Murphy and Caleb. They had
strayed about twelve miles from the camp, and had fairly lost themselves.
Their trackers had to ride over seventy miles, before they came up to
them, and they would certainly have perished, had not Charley been able
to track them:
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