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. Yet, notwithstanding that we moved at an hour when the natives seldom stir, we were rarely without a party of them, who followed us in spite of our efforts to tire them out.
MOLESTED BY NATIVES.
On the 15th, we had about 150 at our camp. Many of them were extremely noisy, and the whole of them very restless. They lay down close to the tents, or around our fire. I entertained some suspicion of them, and when they were apparently asleep, I watched them narrowly. Macnamee was walking up and down with his firelock, and every time he turned his back, one of the natives rose gently up and poised his spear at him, and as soon as he thought Macnamee was about to turn, he dropped as quietly into his place. When I say the native got up, I do not mean that he stood up, but that he raised himself sufficiently for the purpose he had in view. His spear would not, therefore, have gone with much force, but I determined it should not quit his hand, for had I observed any actual attempt to throw it, I should unquestionably have shot him dead upon the spot. The whole of the natives were awake, and it surprised me they did not attempt to plunder us. They rose with the earliest dawn, and crowded round the tents without any hesitation. We, consequently, thought it prudent to start as soon as we had breakfasted.
FRASER IN DANGER.
We had all of us got into the boat, when Fraser remembered he had left his powder-horn on shore. In getting out to fetch it, he had to push through the natives. On his return, when his back was towards them, several natives lifted their spears together, and I was so apprehensive they would have transfixed him, that I called out before I seized my gun; on which they lowered their weapons and ran away. The disposition to commit personal violence was evident from these repeated acts of treachery; and we should doubtless have suffered from it on some occasion or other, had we not been constantly on the alert.
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.
Our provisions were now running very short; we had, however, "broken the neck of our journey," as the men said, and we looked anxiously to gaining the depot; for we were not without hopes that Robert Harris would have pushed forward to it with his supplies. We were quite puzzled on entering the Morumbidgee, how to navigate its diminutive bends and its encumbered channel. I thought poles would have been more convenient than oars; we therefore stopped at an earlier hour than usual to cut some. Calling to mind the robbery practised on us shortly after we left the depot, my mind became uneasy as to Robert Harris's safety, since I thought it probable, from the sulky disposition of the natives who had visited us there, that he might have been attacked. Thus, when my apprehensions on our own account had partly ceased, my fears became excited with regard to him and his party.
RE-ENTER THE MORUMBIDGEE.
The country, to a considerable distance from the junction on either side the Morumbidgee, is not subject to inundation. Wherever we landed upon its banks, we found the calistemma in full flower, and in the richest profusion. There was, also, an abundance of grass, where before there had been no signs of vegetation, and those spots which we had condemned as barren were now clothed with a green and luxuriant carpet. So difficult is it to judge of a country on a partial and hurried survey, and so differently does it appear at different periods. I was rejoiced to find that the rains had not swollen the river, for I was apprehensive that heavy falls had taken place in the mountains, and was unprepared for so much good fortune.