- Our route lay through a country equally bad, if not worse, than
any which we had passed the preceding days:
In some places it was
difficult for the horses to force a passage through the brush;
occasionally low stony ridges intervened, which, when viewed from higher
eminences, were not to be detected from the plain out of which they
rose. The soil was alternately a sterile sand and a hardened clay,
without grass of any description: the country appeared to form the
bottom of a dry morass, and I am convinced if the weather had not been
dry for a considerable time, travelling would have been impossible.
After proceeding ten miles we were obliged to stop, the horses being
unable to go further. We had seen no signs of water during our route,
but stopping at a stony water-course we were in hopes of finding a
sufficiency to supply our wants, and on a hill at the end of it, about a
quarter of a mile to the westward, water was found.
May 24. - A day of rest and preparation. The country seems to rise
hereabouts and to be more broken, the ridges stony: the dwarf timber and
brush very thick. In searching for the horses this morning several
kangaroos and emus were seen, also the huts of a tribe of natives
recently inhabited.
May 25. - The horses much refreshed, except one which is unable to carry
any thing; his load was therefore obliged to be distributed among the
rest, already too heavily laden. At nine o'clock set forward on our
journey. At two we arrived at the base of a hill of considerable
magnitude, terminating westward in an abrupt perpendicular rock
from two hundred and fifty to three hundred feet high. The country we
passed over was of the most miserable description; the last eight miles
without a blade of grass. The acacia brushes grow generally on a hard
and clayey soil evidently frequently covered with water, and I consider
that these plains or brushes are swamps or morasses in wet weather,
since they must receive all the water from the low ranges with which
they are generally circumscribed. It is a remarkable feature in the
hills of this country that their terminations are generally
perpendicular westward, rising from the lower grounds round from
south-west to north-west very gradually; their terminating rocky bluffs
are usually two or three hundred feet high. I include in these
observations not only the single detached hills, but the points of the
ranges. This hill was named Mount Aiton. The country having been
recently burnt, some good grass was found for the horses a little to the
south-west. We therefore stopped for the night, and ascended the face of
the mount for the purpose of looking around: a very large brown speckled
snake was killed about half way up, which, in the absence of fresh
provisions, was afterwards eaten by some of the party. On arriving at
the summit we had an extensive prospect in every direction; the country
was most generally level, but rose occasionally into gentle eminences
bounded by distant low ranges from the south south-west to the
north-west.
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