DRY BED OF THE LACHLAN.
At the end of four miles we found that junction had taken place, and the bed of the river as broad and deep as usual, but it was everywhere dry. I made the people lead the exhausted horses from point to point, while I examined all the bends, for the course was very sinuous; still I saw no appearance of water, nor even of any having recently dried up.
FIND AT LENGTH A LARGE POOL.
After proceeding thus about two miles, the chirping of birds and a tree full of chattering parrots raised my hopes that water was near; and at a very sharp turn of the channel, to the great delight of all, I at length saw a large and deep pool. Our horses stood drinking a full quarter of an hour; and during the time a duck dropped into the pond amongst them. The poor bird appeared to have been as much overcome by thirst as ourselves for, on the inconsiderate native throwing his boomerang, it was scarcely able to fly to the top of the opposite bank. As the grass was good I halted during the remainder of the day for the sake of our horses; although the delay subjected us to another night in the bush. I made the men sit down out of sight of the pond for a reason which I did not choose to tell them; but it was that we might not, by our presence, deprive many other starving creatures of a benefit which Providence had so bountifully afforded to us.
On a large tree overlooking the pond, and which had already been deprived by the natives of a considerable patch of bark, I chalked the letter M, which the men cut out of the solid wood with their tomahawks. This being the lowest permanent pond above the separation of the river into so many arms, I thought that by such a mark of a white man the natives would be more ready to point out the spot to any future traveller when required. I found about the fires of the natives a number of small balls of dry fibre resembling hemp, and I at first supposed it to be a preparation for making nets, having seen such on the Darling.
FOOD OF THE NATIVES DISCOVERED.
Barney the native however soon set me right by taking up the root of a large reed or bulrush which grew in a dry lagoon hard by, and by showing me how the natives extracted from the rhizoma a quantity of gluten; and this was what they eat, obtaining it by chewing the fibre. They take up the root of the bulrush in lengths of about eight or ten inches, peel off the outer rind and lay it a little before the fire; then they twist and loosen the fibres, when a quantity of gluten, exactly resembling wheaten flour, may be shaken out, affording at all times a ready and wholesome food. It struck me that this gluten, which they call Balyan, must be the staff of life to the tribes inhabiting these morasses, where tumuli and other traces of human beings were more abundant than at any part of the Lachlan that I had visited.
HORSES KNOCK UP.
April 25.
We continued our route upwards along the right bank of the Lachlan on a bearing of 36 degrees East of North taken from Mr. Oxley's map: and coming to the river at nine miles we again watered our horses, and rested them for they were very weak. After travelling fifteen miles one of them rode by Woods, who carried the theodolite, knocked up when we were far from the Lachlan. With some difficulty we however got it on until we reached the river and, finding water, we halted for the day after a ride of twenty-one miles.