"So you saw no more of them?"
"Oh, yes, your honour, I saw some of them after they had been sold at the pound!—I wanted to have had something provided for a small family of children, and if I had only had a few acres of ground, I could have kept my cows."
This was merely a passing remark made with a laugh as we walked along, for he was one of the race—
"Who march to death with military glee."
But the fate of a poor man's family was a serious subject: such was the hopeless condition of a useful mechanic ready for work even in the desolate forests skirting the haunts of the savage. So fares it with the disjecta membra of towns and villages, when such arrangements are left to the people themselves in a new colony.
18TH DECEMBER.—The party moved off about 7 a.m., and continued along a tolerable road, crossing what shepherds called Seven Mile Creek, in which there was some water; and a little further on we quitted the good beaten road leading to Balderudgery, and followed one to the left, which brought us to another sheep station on the same chain of ponds, three miles higher up than Balderudgery. Having directed the party to encamp here, I pursued the road south-westward along the chain of ponds, anxious to ascertain whether I could in that direction pass easily to the westward of Hervey's Range, and so fall into my former line of route to the Bogan. At about five miles I found an excellent opening through which the road passed on ground almost level. Having ascended a small eminence on the right, I fell in with some natives with spears, who seemed to recognise me, by pointing to my old line of route, and saying, "Majy Majy" (Major Mitchell). I little thought then that this was already an outlying picquet of the Bogan Blacks, sent forward to observe my party. The day was hot, therm. 97° in the shade. The chain of ponds, there called "the Little River," contained water in abundance, and was said to flow into the Macquarie, in which case the Bogan can have but few sources in Hervey's Range.
The station beside which we had encamped, comprised a stock yard, and had been formerly a cattle station belonging to Mr. Kite. It was now a sheep station of Dr. Ramsay's, and there was another sheep station a mile and a half from it, along the road I had examined. Thus the country suitable for either kind of stock is taken up by the gradual encroachment of sheep on cattle runs, not properly such. This easily takes place—as where sheep feed, cattle will not remain, and sheep will fatten where cattle would lose flesh. Fortunately, however, for the holders of the latter description of stock, there are limits to this kind of encroachment. The plains to the westward of these ranges afford the most nutritive pasturage in the world for cattle, and they are too flat and subject to inundations to be desirable for sheep. A zone of country of this description lies on the interior side of the ranges, as far as I have examined them. It is watered by the sources of the rivers Goulburn, Ovens, Murray, Murrumbidgee, Lachlan, Bogan, Macquarie, Castlereagh, Nammoy, Peel, Gwydir, and Darling; on which rivers the runs will always make cattle fat. There are two shrubs palpably salt, and, perhaps, there is something salsolaceous in the herbage also on which cattle thrive so well; and the open plains and muddy waterholes are their delight. Excessive drought, however, may occasionally reduce the owners of such stock to great extremities, and subject them to serious loss. The Acacia pendula, a tree whose habitat is limited and remarkable, is much relished by the cattle. It is found only in clay soils, on the borders of plains, which are occasionally so saturated with water as to be quite impassable; never on higher ground nor on any lower than that limited sort of locality, in the neighbourhood of rivers which at some seasons overflow. In such situations, even where grass seems very scarce, cattle get fat; and it is a practice of stockmen to cut down the Acacia pendula (or Myall trees, as they call them) for the cattle to feed on.
At this sheep station where we had encamped, I met with an individual who had seen better days, and had lost his property amid the wreck of colonial bankruptcies—a tea-totaller, with Pope's Essay on Man for his consolation, in a bark hut. This "melancholy Jaques" lamented the state of depravity to which the colony was reduced, and assured me that there were shepherdesses in the bush! This startling fact should not be startling, but for the disproportion of sexes, and the squatting system which checks the spread of families. If pastoralisation were not one thing, and colonisation another, the occupation of tending sheep should be as fit and proper for women as for men. The pastoral life, so favourable to love and the enjoyment of nature, has ever been a favourite theme of the poet. Here it appears to be the antidote of all poetry and propriety, only because man's better half is wanting. Under this unfavourable aspect the white man first comes before the aboriginal native; were the intruders accompanied by women and children, they could not be half so unwelcome. One of the most striking differences between squatting and settling in Australia consists in this. Indeed if it were an object to uncivilise the human race, I know of no method more likely to effect it than to isolate a man from the gentler sex and children; remove afar off all courts of justice and means of redress of grievances, all churches and schools, all shops where he can make use of money, then place him in close contact with savages. "What better off am I than a black native?" was the exclamation of a shepherd to me just before I penned these remarks.
19TH DECEMBER.—The party moved along the road I had previously examined. On passing through to the western side, I recognised the trees, plants, and birds of the interior regions. Granitic hills appeared on each side, and the sweet-scented Callitris grew around, with many a curious shrub never seen to the eastward of these ranges. On descending, grassy valleys, with gullies containing little or no water, reminded me of former difficulties in the same vicinity, and it was not until we had travelled upwards of sixteen miles that I could encamp near water. This consisted of some very muddy holes of the Goobang Creek, on which I had formerly been pleasantly encamped with Mr. Cunningham. [* See Vol. I. of Three Expeditions, etc., page 171.] Two or three natives soon made their appearance, one of whom I immediately recognised to be my old friend Bultje, who had guided me from thence to the Bené Rocks, on my former journey along the Bogan. He brought an offering of honey. Ten years had elapsed since I formerly met the same native in the same valley, and time had made no alteration in his appearance. With the same readiness to forward my views that he formerly evinced, he informed me where the water was to be found; and how I should travel so as to fall in with my former route, by the least possible détour. Mount Laidley bore 23° E. of N.
20TH DECEMBER.—This day I gave the cattle a rest, as the grass seemed good, while I rode to look at my old line of marked trees. A cattle station (of Mr. Kite) was within a mile and a half of our camp, and at about three miles below it, I fell in with the former line. Where it crossed the Goobang, a track still continued by them, but finally diverged, leaving the line of marked trees, without the slightest trace of the wheels or hoofs that had formerly passed by it. Reaching a hill laid down on my former survey, and from which I recognised Mount Laidley, I returned directly to the camp. We had encamped near those very springs mentioned as seen on my former journey, but instead of being limpid and surrounded by verdant grass, as they had been then, they were now trodden by cattle into muddy holes, where the poor natives had been endeavouring to protect a small portion from the cattle's feet, and keep it pure, by laying over it trees they had cut down for the purpose. The change produced in the aspect of this formerly happy secluded valley, by the intrusion of cattle and the white man, was by no means favourable, and I could easily conceive how I, had I been an aboriginal native, should have felt and regretted that change. The springs which issue from the level plains of clay, while the bed of the water-course some twenty feet lower continues dry and dusty, are numerous. One had a strong taste of sulphur, and might probably be as salubrious as other springs more celebrated. They show that, in this country at least, the water-courses are not supplied by springs, but depend wholly on heavy torrents of rain descending from the mountains. Some holes in the bed of the Goobang Creek did however retain some water which had fallen during the last rain. The thermometer stood at 107° in the tent.