DIFFERENCE OF SOIL AS TO MOISTURE - PHILLIPS'S MOUNTAIN - ALLOWANCE OF
FLOUR REDUCED AGAIN - HUGHS'S CREEK - TOMBSTONE CREEK - CHARLEY AND
BROWN
BECOME UNRULY - THE ISAACS - NATIVE WOMEN - COXEN'S PEAK AND RANGE -
GEOLOGICAL CHARACTER - CHARLEY REBELS AGAIN AND LEAVES - BROWN FOLLOWS
HIM - BOTH RETURN PENITENT - VARIATIONS OF THE WEATHER - SKULL OF
NATIVE - FRIENDLY NATIVES VISIT THE CAMP.
Feb. 2. - Being much recovered, I took both Blackfellows with me, and
again passed the defile east of Roper's and Scott's Peaks, and followed
the watercourse rising from it to the northward. About two or three miles
lower down, we found water in deep rocky basins in the bed of the creek.
The rock was sandstone, fissured from south-west to north-east.
In passing the foot of the peaks, we found a species of Grewia (Dwarf
Roorajong) covered with ripe fruit; the fruit is dry, but the stringy
tissue which covers the seed, contains a slightly sweet and acidulous
substance of a very agreeable taste. The fig-tree with a rough leaf, had
plenty of fruit, but not yet ripe. Erythrina was both in blossom and in
seed.
Sending Brown back to conduct our party to the water-holes we had found,
and leaving the creek, which turned to the eastward, I continued my ride
to the northward. I passed some gentle well-grassed slopes of
narrow-leaved Ironbark and spotted gum; and also several basaltic ridges,
which head out into small plains gently sloping to the east and
north-east. They are formed of a rich black soil, and generally a shallow
creek meanders through them: sandstone ridges formed their boundary lower
down, where, at their foot, water-holes generally existed, either with a
constant supply of water, or readily filled by thunder-showers. The
basaltic ridges, as well as the plains, were covered with a fine crop of
dry grass; but the sandstone ridges were frequently scrubby. The
difference between the sandstone country and the basaltic plains and
ridges, is very striking in respect to the quantity of water they
contain: in the latter, rain is immediately absorbed by the cracked
porous soil, which requires an immense quantity of moisture before it
allows any drainage; whereas the sandstone forms steeper slopes, and does
not absorb the rain so quickly, so that the water runs down the slopes,
and collects in holes at the foot of the hills parallel to the creeks.
Scrubs are frequent round the low rises of sandstone; and, where the
country is level, and the soil loamy, the hollows are often filled with
water by the thunder-storms. The moist character of this description of
country is probably the cause of the vegetation being more dense than it
is in the rich black soil of the plains; in which latter, the seeds of
the grasses and herbs lie dormant, until the first rain falls, when they
instantly germinate and cover the plain with their rapid and luxuriant
growth, as if by enchantment; but which, from its nature, is incapable of
maintaining the growth of scrubs and trees.
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