This Was The Largest Interior River (With The Exception Of The
Macquarie And Castlereagh), Which We Had Yet Seen.
It would be impossible
to find a finer or more luxuriant country than it waters:
North and
south, its extent is unknown, but it is certainly not less than sixty
miles, whilst the breadth of the vale is on a medium about twenty miles.
This space between the bounding hills is not altogether level, but rises
into gentle inequalities, and independently of the river is well watered;
the grass was most luxuriant; the timber good and not thick: in short, no
place in the world can afford more advantages to the industrious settler,
than this extensive vale. The river was named Peel's River, in honour of
the Right Hon. Robert Peel. A great many new plants were found to-day and
yesterday, chiefly of the orchis tribe [Note: Orchideae of Juss. and
BROWN.]: we saw numbers of the ornithorynchus, or water mole, in the
river, also a few turtle: we were not successful in obtaining any fish,
so that we were unable to decide whether it contained the same species as
the Macquarie.
September 3. - After passing over a fine and gently rising country for
between four and five miles, we ascended a very lofty chain of hills,
being the eastern boundary of Goulburn Vale; these hills were of
good soil, and covered with excellent grass to their very summits.
Ascending two of the highest ridges, several circular orifices were
observed on them about twelve feet in diameter, and five feet deep.
Great quantities of small stones resembling basaltes were in heaps
round the edges, at a little distance from which the stones were
perpendicular, and firmly bedded in the earth; many of them regular
six-sided figures, and all fractured into laminae, from two to nine
inches in thickness. The rocks upon this range were of a peculiarly hard
quality, and of a deep blue colour, approaching to black when broken. The
country easterly appeared broken into a series of rocky detached hills:
and on descending this range, we found an immediate change in the quality
of the soil, being in the valleys of a light coarse sand, the surface
covered with gritty particles as from pulverised coarse granite. The
difference in the rocks composing the hills was here very remarkable,
being a very coarse granite of the same description as in the
neighbourhood of Bathurst, scattered in immense masses both in the
valleys and on the hills; and our astonishment was more than once
excited at the causes which could have effected their removal from their
primitive bed. On a hill near which we encamped, was a single mass of
granite apparently thrown up perpendicularly from the bosom of the earth:
it was twenty-six feet high and had six distinct sides, ending in an
irregular point at the summit, and was forty-eight feet in circumference.
The valleys, though sandy, afforded us plenty of good grass and water,
and the hills furnished abundant employment for the botanical collector.
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