To Collect A Vocabulary Of Words In A Strange
Language, It Is In Some Measure Necessary That The Party Who Is To
Afford The Knowledge Should Understand For What Purpose He Is
Questioned, Which It Was Impossible To Make These Simple Creatures
Comprehend.
They left us about an hour before sunset, highly gratified
with their adventure.
August 16. - Quitted the valley (which was named Mary's Valley) on our
eastern course, anxiously hoping that we should reach the river in the
course of the day. We had heard last night and this morning the screams
of the white cockatoo, which we have always looked upon as a certain
sign of approaching water.
The same fine grazing tract of country continued over irregular hills
and valleys for about four miles, when ascending a high hill (named
Mount Johnston), a little upon our left, we had a very extensive view to
the north-east and east. In the former quarter, a beautiful range of
hills
stretching north and south, bounded at a distance of about eight miles
the fine extensive valley before us; under those hills we would fain
have found the Macquarie, fancying that we could distinguish the haze
arising from water. To the northward, two hills skirted the valley at a
distance of six or seven miles, which might be about the medium width of
it from north to south, in which quarter a rocky range, clothed with
pines and iron-bark, prevented us from seeing to any great distance; to
the east and south-east, the same low irregular country appeared, thinly
covered with trees and grass.
Desirous of ascertaining if our conjectures were well founded in respect
to the river, we altered our course, which was east, to north-east,
keeping down the south side of the valley or plain, which we had seen
from Mount Johnston. A finer or more fertile country than that we passed
through for about four miles and a half cannot be imagined: the soil, a
light brown, sandy loam, covered with broom-grass from four to five feet
high. After travelling the above distance, we most unexpectedly came
upon a stream, which from its high grassy banks and rocky bottom we were
obliged to conclude must be the river we were in search of; but so
diminished in magnitude that the motion of the water connecting the long
chains of reedy ponds, was so slow as scarcely to entitle it to the
appellation of a living stream. The whole country from where we quitted
the Lachlan to this spot had borne evident marks of long continued
drought, and in no part was it more apparent than in the present stream
which was so much smaller than it was at Bathurst, even after the great
drought in 1815, that after going up it three or four miles, I began to
entertain great doubts of its being the same, hoping that it might be
one of the channels which must convey the waters from the high ranges of
hills, lying nearly midway between the Lachlan and the Macquarie Rivers.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 77 of 184
Words from 39567 to 40080
of 95539
