I Should Have Been Well Contented To Have
Found This To Be The Macquarie River, And At First Conceived It To Be
So.
Under this impression, I intended stopping upon its banks for the
remainder of the day, and then proceeding up
The stream southerly.
Whilst we were waiting for the horses to come up we crossed the stream,
and wishing to see as much of the country on its banks northerly, as
possible, I proceeded down the stream, and had scarcely rode a mile when
I was no less astonished than delighted to find that it joined a very
fine river, coming from the east-south-east from among the chain of low
grassy hills, bounding the east side of the valley in which we were.
This then was certainly the long sought Macquarie, the sight of which
amply repaid us for all our former disappointments. Different in every
respect from the Lachlan, it here formed a river equal to the Hawkesbury
at Windsor, and in many parts as wide as the Nepean at Emu Plains. These
noble streams were connected by rapids running over a rocky and pebbly
bottom, but not fordable, much resembling the reaches and falls at the
crossing place at Emuford, only deeper: the water was bright, and
transparent, and we were fortunate enough to see it at a period when it
was neither swelled beyond its proper dimensions by mountain floods, nor
contracted by summer droughts. From its being at least four times larger
than it is at Bathurst, even in a favourable season, it must have
received great accessions of water from the mountains north-easterly;
for from the course it has run from Bathurst, and the number of streams
we have crossed all running to form it from the south and south-west, I
do not think it can receive many more from that quarter between us and
Bathurst, at least of sufficient strength to have formed the
present river.
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