On our return to the camp we found several natives with our people, and among them one of the tallest I had ever seen. Their women were with them, and they appeared to have lost all apprehension of any danger occurring from us. The animals were benefited greatly by this day of rest. We left the plain, therefore, on the 13th with renewed spirits, and passed over a country very similar to that by which we had approached it, one well adapted for grazing, but intersected by numerous creeks, at two of which we
found natives, some of whom joined our party. Our old friend left us in quest of some blacks, who, as he informed Hopkinson, had seen the tracks of our horses on the Darling. I was truly puzzled at such a statement, which was, however, further corroborated by the circumstance of one of the natives having a tire-nail affixed to a spear, which he said was picked up, by the man who gave it to him, on one of our encampments. I could not think it likely that this story was true, and rather imagined they must have picked up the nail near the located districts, and I was anxious to have the point cleared up. When we halted we had a large assemblage of natives with us, amounting in all to twenty-seven, but I awaited in vain the return of the old man. The night passed away without our seeing him, nor did he again join us.
We started in the morning with our new acquaintances, and kept on a south-westerly course during the day, over an excellent grazing, and, in many places, an agricultural country, still intersected by creeks, that were too deep for the water to have dried in them. The country more remote from the river, however, began to assume more and more the character and appearance of the northern interior. I rode into several plains, the soil of which was either a red sandy loam, bare of vegetation, or a rotten and blistered earth, producing nothing but rhagodiae, salsolae, and misembrianthemum.
We fell in with another tribe of blacks during the journey, to whom we were literally consigned by those who had
been previously with us, and who now turned back, while our new friends took the lead of the drays. They were two fine young men, but had very ugly wives, and were for a long time extremely diffident. I found that I could obtain but little information through my black boy,—whether from his not understanding me, or because he was too cunning, is uncertain. One of these young men, however, clearly stated that he had seen the tracks of bullocks and horses, a long time ago, to the N.N.W. in the direction of some detached hills, that were visible from 20 to 25 miles distant. He remembered them, he said, as a boy, and added that the white men were without water. It was, therefore, clear that he alluded to Mr. Oxley's excursion, northerly from the Lachlan, and I had no doubt on my mind, that he had been on one of that officer's encampments, and that the hills to the north of us were those to the opposite base of which he had penetrated. I was determined, therefore, if practicable, to reach these hills, deeming it a matter of great importance to connect the surveys, but I deferred my journey for a day or two, in hopes, from the continued northerly course of the river, that we should have approached them nearer.
In the evening we fell in with some more blacks, among whom were two brothers, of those who were acting as our guides. One had a very pretty girl as a wife, and all the four brothers were very good-looking young men. There cannot, I should think, be a numerous population on the banks of the Morumbidgee, from the fact of our
having seen not more than fifty in an extent of more than 180 miles. They are apparently scattered along it in families. I was rather surprised that my boy understood their language well, since it certainly differed from that of the Macquarie tribes, but nevertheless as these people do not wander far, our information as to what was before us was very gradually arrived at, and only as we fell in with the successive families. Moreover, as my boy was very young, it may be that he was more eager in communicating to those who had no idea of them, the wonders he had seen, than in making inquiries on points that were indifferent to him.
We passed a very large plain in the course of the day, which was bounded by forests of box, cypress, and the acacia pendula, of red sandy soil and parched appearance. The Morumbidgee evidently overflows a part of the lands we crossed, to a greater extent than heretofore, though the alluvial deposits beyond its influence were still both rich and extensive. The crested pigeon made its appearance on the acacias, which I took to be a sure sign of our approach to a country more than ordinarily subject to overflow; since on the Macquarie and the Darling, those birds were found only to inhabit the regions of marshes, or spaces covered by the acacia pendula, or the polygonum. We had not, however, yet seen any of the latter plant, although we were shortly destined to be almost lost amidst fields of it.
We were now approaching that parallel of longitude in
which the other known rivers of New Holland had been found to exhaust themselves; the least change therefore, for the worse was sufficient to raise my apprehensions; yet, although the Morumbidgee had received no tributary from the Dumot downwards, and was leading us into an apparently endless level, I saw no indication of its decreasing in size, or in the rapidity of its current. Certainly, however, I had, from the character of the country around us, an anticipation that a change was about to take place in it, and this anticipation was verified in the course of the following day. The alluvial flats gradually decreased in breadth, and we journeyed mostly over extensive and barren plains, which in many places approached so near the river as to form a part of its bank. They were covered with the salsolaceous class of plants, so common in the interior, in a red sandy soil, and were as even as a bowling green. The alluvial spaces near the river became covered with reeds, and, though subject to overflow at every partial rise of it, were so extremely small as scarcely to afford food for our cattle. Flooded-gum trees of lofty size grew on these reedy spaces, and marked the line of the river, but the timber of the interior appeared stunted and useless.