August 22.
Early this morning the cooeys of three natives were heard. On meeting them they went through the usual formalities; an old man fixing his eyes on the ground with due decorum. They could say budgery; and by their repeating this word they appeared, in our eyes, infinitely less savage than the natives on the Darling. They also plainly alluded to the man wounded with small shot at the encounter which took place on our formerly occupying the next camp up the Bogan. We understood them to allude to this event by their tapping rapidly with the finger over the arm and shoulder; and then pointing towards the place where the unfortunate rencontre happened. We had been more than usual on our guard in returning towards the haunts of a tribe where we had, although unwillingly, done such mischief; but these fellows seemed, by their laughing, to advert to it as a good joke, and we therefore concluded that the poor fellow had recovered. They asked for nothing, and on retiring made signs that they were going towards the hills, or westward. We travelled towards our former camp of May 14, but the distance being sixteen miles it was too much for our weak animals. We halted therefore four miles short of it; and though we turned a mile off the route to the eastward in search of the Bogan we did not find it until after we had encamped, and then at nearly a mile further to the eastward still.
PLATE 19: PORTRAIT OF TALAMBE, A YOUNG NATIVE OF THE BOGAN TRIBE, WITH THE Acacia pendula AND SCENERY OF THE PLAINS NEAR THE RIVER BOGAN.
Major T.L. Mitchell del.
London, Published by T. and W. Boone.
ANOTHER MAN OF THE PARTY TAKEN ILL.
Another man of the party, Johnston, who was rather aged, began to show symptoms of the black scurvy, which made him walk lame. This might be partly attributed to the rancidity of the salt pork rather than the saltness, as it had been in a great measure spoiled by having been taken out of the proper barrels and put without brine into the water casks before I joined the party. The two men now afflicted with scurvy were precisely those who ate this pork most voraciously; and consequently its effect soonest became apparent upon them.
Acacia pendula. BEAUTY OF THE SCENERY.
August 23.
The weather again quite serene. We continued our march and, passing our former camp of the 14th, reached that of May 13 by two P.M. The ponds in which we had before found water were now dried up; but we fortunately discovered others a little distance higher. At two miles onward from the camp of May 14 we saw bushes of Acacia pendula for the first time since we had previously passed that place. The locality of that beautiful shrub is very peculiar, being always near but never within, the limits of inundations. Never far from hills yet never upon them. These bushes, blended with a variety of other acacias and crowned here and there with casuarinae, form very picturesque groups, especially when relieved with much open ground. Indeed the beauty of the sylvan scenery on the lower Bogan may be cited as an exception to the general want of pictorial effect in the woods of New South Wales. The poverty of the foliage of the eucalyptus, the prevailing tree, affords little of mass or shadow; and indeed seldom has that tree, either in the trunk or branches, anything ornamental to landscape. On these plains, where all surrounding trees and shrubs seemed different from those of other countries, the Agrostis virginica of Linnaeus, a grass common throughout Asia and America, but new to me in Australia, grew near the scrubs. Here also grows a new species of Eleusine, being a very tall nutritious grass.*