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: it was indeed a providential circumstance that he had not
left us. According to their statement, the country is very open, with a
fine large creek, which flows down to the Condamine; this is the creek
which we passed on the 10th Oct., and which I called "Charley's Creek."
The creek first seen by Mr. Hodgson joins this, and we are consequently
still on westerly waters.
Thermometer, at sunrise, 54 degrees (in the water 64 degrees); at eight
o'clock 64 degrees. Strong easterly and northerly winds during the last
two nights. It becomes calm at a quarter past three, with the rise of
Venus.
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