The Latitude Of Our Camp Was 17 Degrees 25
Minutes.
We had seen a great number of pigeons and white cockatoos, and we were
sure that a greater supply of water was near, as many patches of burnt
grass showed that the natives had been here very lately.
Next morning,
the 26th, when Charley returned with the horses, he told us that we had
passed a fine lagoon, not a mile and a half off, at the left bank of the
river, which the night had prevented us from seeing, and which the horses
had found when returning on their tracks. We moved our camp to this
lagoon, which was covered with Villarsia leaves, and contained a reddish
water coloured by very minute floating bodies of that colour. The natives
had surrounded it with dry sticks, leaving an opening on one side, for
the purpose of taking emus, as before described. These birds were very
numerous, and lived exclusively on the fruit of the little Severn tree,
which was excessively bitter and imparted its quality to the meat;
Charley and Brown, assisted by the dog, killed one of them. A cockatoo
was shot, which in form and colours resembled the large white cockatoo,
but was rather smaller, and the feathers of the breast were tipped with
red. We saw the bones of a Jew fish, and a broken shell of Cymbium, in an
old camp of the natives near the lagoon.
The apple-gum, the box, and the Moreton Bay ash composed a very open
well-grassed forest, between the lagoon and the river; the latter had an
E. N. E. and almost easterly course.
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