We Did Not Understand, Nor Could We Ascertain, In What Relation
This Singular Country And The Creek Stood To The River, Of Which Nothing
Was To Be Seen From The Right Bank Of The Creek.
The scrub, and the high grass along the creek, were swarming with white
flanked wallabies, three of which Brown and Charley succeeded in
shooting; and these, with a common grey kangaroo caught by Spring, and
five ducks shot by Brown, provided our larder with a fine supply of game.
When I first came on the Lynd, I supposed that it flowed either
independently to the head of the gulf, or that it was the tributary of a
river which collected the waters of the York Peninsula, and carried them
in a south-west or south-south-west course to the head of the gulf of
Carpentaria. Such a course would have corresponded to that of the
Burdekin at the eastern side, and the supposition was tolerably warranted
by the peculiar conformation of the gulf. I expected, therefore, at every
stage down the Lynd, at every bend to the westward, that it would keep
that course. But, having passed the latitude of the head of the gulf, as
well as those of the Van Diemen and the Staaten rivers, the Lynd still
flowed to the north-west; and then, when it joined the Mitchell, I
imagined that the new river would prove to be the Nassau; but, when it
passed the latitude of that river, I conjectured that it would join the
sea at the large embouchure in the old charts, in latitude 15 degrees 5
minutes - the "Water Plaets" of the Dutch navigators.
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