The two united formed a noble stream finely breaking up the dead levels of the surrounding plains which indeed, where we approached it, formed its highest bank and were there twenty-three feet above the water.
No time was lost in launching our boat, and we effected a passage and encamped on the opposite bank before sunset, having driven all the cattle and horses safely across also, although with considerable difficulty from the steepness of the banks and softness of the soil at the water's edge on the side where they got to land.
October 16.
This morning the river had fallen three inches; its temperature was 59 degrees (of Fahrenheit) the current flowing at the rate of 1 1/4 miles per hour; the mean depth two fathoms; and the width, where measured, 47 yards; the breadth of the river King at the junction being nearly as much. The right bank to the distance of a mile and a half from the river was low and alluvial, and intersected by narrow watercourses and lagoons. On the alluvial flat where we crossed it stood a small isolated hill, between which and the higher ground still farther back water was running, apparently from a swamp, but as soon as we crossed this we reached firm ground and travelled on an open forest plain for nearly eight miles.
ASCEND GRANITIC RANGES.
We then came upon a hill of granite, and from its summit I perceived that we were already on the northern extremities of the high ranges we had seen from the westward. After travelling some miles along the summits of ridges in order to reach their connection with another range more to the northward, I ascertained, on crossing the highest part of a second ridge, that its northern slopes were very steep and rocky. A hill of considerable height lay before us and therefore, as soon as I had selected a spot for our camp in a little intervening valley, I hastened to it, certainly in doubt how we should extricate the carts from the rocky fastnesses before us. That summit afforded a commanding view of the country beyond the granitic range, and I perceived that it was low to a considerable distance northward, while the ranges beyond that extensive basin seemed of no great elevation to the westward or north-west, and all terminated on the level interior country where the horizon was broken by only one remarkable hill which, as I afterwards learnt, was named Dingee. In that direction I saw also open plains along which I thought I could trace the line of the Ovens. In the lower country before me I hoped to find the Murray, according to the map of Messrs. Hovell and Hume, which in the two rivers we had recently passed seemed wonderfully correct.
LOFTY MASS NAMED MOUNT ABERDEEN.
I again recognised in the south and south-east some of the snowy peaks formerly noticed, and I named the most lofty mass Mount Aberdeen. Beyond what I considered to be the course or bed of the Murray there appeared some steep ranges, to avoid which I chose a course more to the northward than I should otherwise have pursued in my way towards Yass. Before I returned to the camp I sought and succeeded in finding and marking out, a line of route by which the carts could be conducted across these rocky ranges and down to the lower country beyond them. On that range we found a handsome blue flower which I had previously seen growing abundantly on Bowral range near Mittagong within the present colony. We found in these valleys abundance of good grass.
October 17.
We descended from the higher range without difficulty, and then crossed several low ridges of quartz and clay-slate extending westward; some flats of good land lay between these ridges and, at about 6 miles, we met with a creek or chain of ponds. At 13 1/2 miles we entered a rich plain terminating northward at a low but remarkable hill which I had observed from the mountains.