Six days had passed since their departure; we remaining encamped. I had calculated on seeing Hopkinson again in eight days, but as the morrow would see us without food, I thought, as the men had had a little rest, it would be better to advance towards relief than to await its arrival.
On the evening of the 18th, therefore, we buried our specimens and other stores, intending to break up the camp in the morning. A singular bird, which invariably passed it at an hour after sunset, and which, from the heavy flight, appeared to be of unusual size, had so attracted my notice, that in the evening M'Leay and I crossed the river in hope to get a shot at it. We had, however, hardly landed on the other side, when a loud shout called us back to witness the return of our comrades.
They were both of them in a state that beggars description. Their knees and ankles were dreadfully swollen and their limbs so painful that as soon as they arrived in the camp they sunk under their efforts, but they met us with a smiling countenance and expressed their satisfaction at having come so seasonably to our relief. They had, as I had foreseen, found Robert Harris on the plain, which they reached on the evening of the third day. They had started early the next morning on their return with such supplies as they thought we might immediately want. Poor Macnamee had in a great measure recovered, but for some days he was sullen and silent; the sight of the drays gave him uncommon satisfaction. Clayton gorged himself; but M'Leay, myself, and Fraser could not at first relish the meat that was placed before us.
THE INTERIOR. II
Source.—Life of Charles Sturt (Mrs. N.G. Sturt), pp. 230-232, 264-267, 279-280
Observations of the migrations of birds convinced Sturt that there was good land in the interior of New South Wales, and in 1844 he set out to find it. His expedition failed because the season was exceptionally dry, and he was obliged to turn back before he had accomplished his object.
"If a line be drawn from Lat. 29° 30´ and Long. 140° N.W., and another from Mount Arden due north, they will meet a little to the northward of the tropic, and there I will be bound to say a fine country will be discovered." On what date Sturt pledges himself to the discovery of this fine country is not stated, but when later regretting his failure to reach the tropic and to set at rest his hypothesis of the better country to be found there, he briefly tells his reason for the supposition.
"Birds observed east of the Darling in the summer of 1828 in about lat. 29° 30´ S. and long. 144° had invariably migrated to the W.N.W. Cockatoos and parrots, known while in the colony to frequent the richest and best-watered valleys of the higher lands, would pass in countless flights to that point of the compass. In South Australia, in lat. 35° and long. 138°, I had also observed that several birds of the same kind annually visited that Province from the north. I had seen the Psittacus Novae Hollandiae and the shell paroquet following the shoreline of St. Vincent's Gulf like flights of starlings in England. The different flights at intervals of more than a quarter of an hour, all came from the north, and followed in one and the same direction.
"Now although the casual appearance of a few strange birds should not influence the judgement, yet from the regular migrations of the feathered race, a reasonable inference may be drawn. Seeing then that these two lines (viz., from Fort Bourke about lat. 30° and long. 144° to the W.N.W., and from Mount Arden in lat. 35° long. 138° to the north) if prolonged would meet a little to the northward of the tropic, I formed the following conclusions: