We Came At Last To The Steep Banks Of A
Salt-Water Creek Densely Covered With Cypress Pine Scrub, And Followed It
For Several Miles Up To Its Head, When Two Kites Betrayed To Us A Fine
Lagoon, Surrounded With Polygonums And Good Pasture.
The natives were
either able to drink very brackish water, or they carried the necessary
supply of fresh water to these Pandanus groves, at which they had
evidently remained a long time to gather the fruit.
Sept. 14. - We travelled three or four miles north-west, through a
tea-tree forest, when the country opened, and a broad salt-water river
intercepted our course. It came from W.S.W., and went to E.N.E. We
proceeded eight or ten miles along its banks before we came to fresh
water. In its immediate neighbourhood, the country was beautifully
grassed, and openly timbered with bloodwood, stringy-bark, the leguminous
Ironbark, and the white-barked tree of the Abel Tasman. Over the short
space of eight miles we saw at least one hundred emus, in flocks of
three, five, ten, and even more, at a time: they had been attracted here
by the young herbage. We killed seven of them, but they were not fat, and
none seemed more than a year old. The extraordinary success induced me to
call this river, the "Seven Emu River."
By following a track of the natives, I found a fine well in the bed of
the river, under the banks; the water was almost perfectly fresh; and
that of the river was only slightly brackish.
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