Charles Sturt

“ We had been drawing nearer the Morumbidgee every day. This was the last tribe we saw on the Murray; and the following afternoon, to our great joy, we quitted it and turned our boat into the gloomy and narrow channel of its tributary. Our feelings were almost as strong when we re–entered it, as they had been when we were launched from it into that river, on whose waters we had continued for upwards of fifty–five days; during which period, including the sweeps and bends it made, we could not have travelled less than 1500 miles. ”

“ I left him then, and, returning to the camp, told M’Leay my adventure, with which he was highly delighted. My object is this procedure was to convince the natives, generally, that we came not among them to injure or to molest them, as well as to impress them with an idea of our superior intelligence; and I am led to indulge the hope that I succeeded. Certain it is, that an act of justice or of lenity has frequently, if well timed, more weight than the utmost stretch of severity. With savages, more particularly, to exhibit any fear, distrust, or irresolution, will inevitably prove injurious. ”

“ A country in a state of nature is, however, so different from one in a state of cultivation, that it is hazardous to give an opinion as to its practical availableness, if I may use such a term. I should, undoubtedly, say the marshes of the Macquarie were frequently covered with water, and that they were wholly unfit for any one purpose whatever. It is evident from the marks of the reeds upon the banks, that the flood covers them occasionally to the depth of three feet, and the reeds are so densely embodied and so close to the river side that the natives cannot walk along it. ”

“ The ducks and swans, seen in such myriads on the lake, seldom appeared on the river, in the first stages of our journey homewards. About the time of which I am writing, however, a few swans occasionally flew over our heads at night, and their silvery note was musically sweet.
From the 10th to the 15th, nothing of moment occurred: we pulled regularly from day–light to dark, not less to avoid the natives than to shorten our journey. ”

“ M’Leay set the example of coolness on this occasion; and I had some doubts whether I was justified in allowing the natives to escape with impunity, considering that if they had wounded any one of us the most melancholy and fatal results would have ensued.
We did not see anything more of the blacks during the rest of the day, but the repeated indications of hostility we perceived as we approached the Darling, made me apprehensive as to the reception we should meet from its numerous population; and I was sorry to observe that the men anticipated danger in passing that promising junction. ”

“ Having left the undulating hills, at the mouth of the valley behind us, we passed cliff after cliff of fossil formation: they had a uniform appearance as to the substance of which they were composed, and varied but little in colour. Having already examined them, we thought it unnecessary to give them any further special attention, since it was improbable we should find anything new. In turning an angle of the river, however, a broad reach stretched away before us. ”

“ On turning round the lower part of the island, we observed that the natives occupied the whole extent of the shoal, and speckled it over like skirmishers. Many of them had their spears, and their attention was evidently directed to us.—As we neared the shoal, the most forward of them pressed close to the edge of the deep water, so much so that our oars struck their legs. Still this did not induce them to retire. I kept my eye on an elderly man who stood one of the most forward, and who motioned to us several times to stop, and at length threw the weapon he carried at the boat. ”

“ NATIVES BECOME TROUBLESOME.
As the morning broke, Hopkinson came to inform me that it was in vain that the guard endeavoured to prevent them from handling every thing, and from closing in round our camp. I went out, and from what I saw I thought it advisable to double the sentries. M’Leay, who was really tired, being unable to close his eyes amid such a din, got up in ill–humour, and went to see into the cause, and to check it if he could. This, however, was impossible. One man was particularly forward and insolent, at whom M’Leay, rather imprudently, threw a piece of dirt. ”

“ The consequence was, that I laid down every bend of the Murray River, from the Morumbidgee downwards. Its creeks, its tributaries, its flats, its valleys, and its cliffs, and, as far as I possibly could do, the nature of the distant interior. This chart was, of course, erroneous in many particulars, since I had to judge the length of the reaches of the river, and the extent of its angles, but I corrected it on the scale of the miles of latitude we made during the day, which brought out an approximate truth at all events. The hurried nature of our journey would not allow me to do more ”

“ The reeds are the broad flag–reed (arundo phragmatis) , and grow on a stiff earthy loam, without any accompanying vegetation; indeed, they form so solid a mass that the sun cannot penetrate to the ground to nourish vegetation. On the other hand, the valley of the Murray, though covered with reeds in most places, is not so in all. There is no mark upon the reeds by which to judge as to the height of inundation, neither are they of the same kind as those which cover the marshes of the Macquarie. ”

“ The expedition returned to Sydney, without any splendid discovery to gild its proceedings; and the labours and dangers it had encountered were considered as nothing more than ordinary occurrences. If I myself had entertained hopes that my researches would have benefited the colony, I was wholly disappointed. There is a barren tract of country lying to the westward of the Blue Mountains that will ever divide the eastern coast from the more central parts of Australia, as completely as if seas actually rolled between them. ”

“ Our provisions were nearly consumed, and would have been wholly exhausted, if we had not been so fortunate as to kill several swans. On the 11th, we gained our camp opposite to Hamilton’s Plains, after a day of severe exertion. Our tents were pitched upon the old ground, and the marks of our cattle were around us. In the evening, the men went out with their guns, and M’Leay and I walked to the rear of the camp, to consult undisturbed as to the moat prudent measures to be adopted, under our embarrassing circumstances. The men were completely sunk. ”

“ The men had various occupations in which, when the natives were present, they were constantly interrupted, and whenever the larger tribes slept near us, the utmost vigilance was necessary on the part of the night–guard, which was regularly mounted as soon as the tents were pitched. We had had little else than our flour to subsist on. Hopkinson and Harris endeavoured to supply M’Leay and myself with a wild fowl occasionally, but for themselves, and the other men, nothing could be procured to render their meal more palatable. ”

“ From it the distant interior to the S.S.E. appears very depressed; that to the north undulates more. In neither quarter, however, does any bright foliage meet the eye, to tell that a better soil is under it; but a dark and gloomy vegetation occupies both the near and distant ground, in proof that the sandy sterile tracts, succeeding the river deposits, stretch far away without a change.
A little above our camp of the 28th of January, we fell in with a large tribe of natives, whose anxiety to detain us was remarkable. ”

“ Just at this moment, however, without our being aware of their approach, a large tribe of natives, with their spears, lined the bank, and took us most completely by surprise. At no time during this anxious journey were we ever so completely in their power, or in so defenceless a situation. It rained so hard, that our firelocks would have been of no use, and had they attacked us, we must necessarily have been slaughtered without committing the least execution upon them. ”

“ They appear rather as the consequences of direct agency, of an invisible power, not as the occasional and fretful workings of nature herself. The marks of that awful catastrophe which so nearly extinguished the human race, are every day becoming more and more visible as geological research proceeds. Thus, in the limestone caves at Wellington Valley, the remains of fossils and exuviae, show that their depths were penetrated by the same searching element that poured into the caverns of Kirkdale and other places. ”

“ With several of these they now paddled round us with the greatest care, making their spears, about ten feet in length, (which they use at once as poles and paddles,) bend nearly double in the water. We had still the most difficult part of the rapid to ascend, where the rush of water was the strongest, and where the decline of the bed almost amounted to a fall. Here the blacks could be of no use to us. No man could stem the current, supposing it to have been shallow at the place, but it was on the contrary extremely deep. ”

“ COMPLETE EXHAUSTION OF THE MEN—ONE LOSES HIS SENSES.
The day after we passed the depot, on our return, we began to experience the effects of the rains that had fallen in the mountains. The Morumbidgee rose upon us six feet in one night, and poured along its turbid waters with proportionate violence. For seventeen days we pulled against them with determined perseverance, but human efforts, under privations such as ours, tend to weaken themselves, and thus it was that the men began to exhibit the effects of severe and unremitting toil. ”

“ It was with the utmost difficulty that we stemmed it with the four oars upon the boat, and the exertion of our whole strength. We remained, at one time, perfectly stationary, the force we employed and that of the current being equal. We at length ran up the stream obliquely; but it was evident the men were not adequate to such exertion for any length of time. We pulled that day for eleven successive hours, in order to avoid a tribe of natives who followed us. Hopkinson and Fraser fell asleep at their oars, and even the heavy Clayton appeared to labour. ”

“ The river might, therefore, be navigated by boats of considerable burden, if the lake admitted of the same facility; but I am decidedly of opinion, that the latter is generally shallow, and that it will, in the course of years, be filled up by depositions. It is not, however, an estuary in any sense of the word, since no part of it is exposed at low water, excepting the flats in the channel, and the flat between the lake and the sea. ”

“ Whilst the expedition was toiling down the rivers, no rich country opened upon the view to reward or to cheer the perseverance of those who composed it, and when, at length, the land of promise lay smiling before them, their strength and their means were too much exhausted to allow of their commencing an examination, of the result of which there could be but little doubt. ”

“ My duty is, simply to give a plain narrative of facts, which I have done with fidelity, and with as much accuracy as circumstances would permit. Had we found Robert Harris at the depot, I should have considered it unnecessary to trespass longer on the patient reader, but as our return to that post did not relieve us from our difficulties, it remains for me to carry on the narrative of our proceedings to the time when we reached the upper branches of the Morumbidgee. ”

“ From the circumstance, moreover, of the summit of the fossil formation being in places covered with oyster shells, the fact of the whole mass having been under water is indisputable, and leads us naturally to the conclusion that the depressed interior beyond it must have been under water at the same time. ”

“ The valley of the Murray, at its entrance, cannot be less than four miles in breadth. The river does not occupy the centre but inclines to either side, according to its windings, and thus the flats are of greater or less extent, according to the distance of the river from the base of the hills. It is to be remarked, that the bottom of the valley is extremely level, and extensively covered with reeds. ”

“ Now, as we know not by what means the changes that have taken place on the earth’s surface have been effected, and can only reason on them from analogy, it is to be feared we shall never arrive at any clear demonstration of the truth of our surmises with regard to geographical changes, whether extensive or local, since the causes which produced them will necessarily have ceased to operate. ”

“ In support of the first of these conclusions, it would appear that a current of water must have swept the vast accumulation of shells, forming the great fossil bank through which the Murray passes from the northern extremity of the continent, to deposit them where they are; and it would further appear from the gradual rise of this bed, on an inclined plain from N.N.E. to S.S.W., that it must in the first instance, have swept along the base of the ranges, but ultimately turned into the above direction by the convexity of the mountains at the S.E. angle of the coast. ”

“ It is impossible to conceive how few of the feathered tribe frequent these distant and lonely regions. The common white cockatoo is the most numerous, and there are also a few pigeons; but other birds descend only for water, and are soon again upon the wing. ”