Disappointed And Fatigued, We Would Willingly Have Profited By The Advantage
Of Being Near Water, And Have Halted To Refresh.
But on consultation,
it was found, that unless we reached in an hour the rivers we had so lately
passed, it would be impossible, on account of the tide, to cross to our
baggage, in which case we should be without food until evening.
We therefore
pushed back, and by dint of alternately running and walking, arrived at
the fords, time enough to pass with ease and safety. So excessive, however,
had been our efforts, and so laborious our progress, that several of the
soldiers, in the course of the last two miles, gave up, and confessed
themselves unable to proceed farther. All that I could do for these
poor fellows, was to order their comrades to carry their muskets, and to leave
with them a small party of those men who were least exhausted, to assist them
and hurry them on. In three quarters of an hour after we had crossed
the water, they arrived at it, just time enough to effect a passage.
The necessity of repose, joined to the succeeding heat of the day,
induced us to prolong our halt until four o'clock in the afternoon,
when we recommenced our operations on the opposite side of the north arm
to that we had acted upon in the morning. Our march ended at sunset,
without our seeing a single native. We had passed through the country
which the discoverers of Botany Bay extol as 'some of the finest meadows
in the world*.' These meadows, instead of grass, are covered with high coarse
rushes, growing in a rotten spongy bog, into which we were plunged knee-deep
at every step.
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