Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia. Ludwig Leichhardt

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СКАЧАТЬ to the eastward; whereas the two westerly ones send theirs to the Boyd, the valley of which has a south-westerly direction. To the north of the Boyd, there is a steep mountain barrier, striking from east to west. All these ranges are composed of sandstone, with their horizontal strata, some of which have a very fine grain. Impressions of Calamites were observed in one of the gullies. We also saw two kangaroos. In the water-hole near our camp, there were numerous small brown leeches, which were very keen in the water, but dropped off as soon as we lifted our feet out of it. The hornets also were very troublesome. Recent bush fires and still smoking trees betokened the presence of natives; who keep, however, carefully out of sight. This country, with its dry scrubby ranges and its deep rocky gullies, seems to be thinly inhabited; the natives keeping, probably, to the lower course of Robinson's Creek and of the Boyd. The descent to the easterly waters is much more gentle; water remains longer in the deep rocky basins or puddled holes of its creeks, and the vegetation is richer and greener. Instead of the cypress-pine scrub, the Corypha-palm and the Casuarina grew here, and invited us to cool shaded waters; the Corypha-palm promised a good supply of cabbage. We had a thunder-storm from the southward, which turned from the range to the eastward. The two last days were cloudless and very hot; but, on the ranges, a cool breeze was stirring from the northward.

      Nov. 30.--I wished to move my camp to a small water-hole about eight miles east by north, which I had found yesterday; but, though I kept more to the northward than I thought necessary, we were everywhere intercepted by deep rocky gullies. Losing much time in heading them, I ventured to descend one of the more practicable spurs, and, to my great satisfaction, my bullocks did it admirably well. The valley into which I entered was very different from these barriers; gentle slopes, covered with open forest of silver-leaved Ironbark, and most beautifully grassed, facilitated my gradual descent to the bottom of the valley, which was broad, flat, thinly timbered with flooded-gum and apple-trees, densely covered with grass, and, in the bed of the creek which passed through it, well provided with reedy water-holes. Before I ventured to proceed with my whole party, I determined to examine the country in advance, and therefore followed up one of the branches of the main creek, in a northerly direction. In proceeding, the silver-leaved Ironbark forest soon ceased, and the valley became narrow and bounded by perpendicular walls of sandstone, composed of coarse grains of quartz, rising out of sandy slopes covered with Dogwood (Jacksonia) and spotted-gum. The rock is in a state of rapid decomposition, with deep holes and caves inhabited by rock-wallabies; and with abundance of nests of wasps, and wasp-like Hymenoptera, attached to their walls, or fixed in the interstices of the loose rock. Through a few gullies I succeeded in ascending a kind of table-land, covered with a low scrub, in which the vegetation about Sydney appeared in several of its most common forms. I then descended into other valleys to the eastward, but all turned to the east and south-east; and, after a long and patient investigation, I found no opening through which we could pass with our bullocks. Although I returned little satisfied with my ride, I had obtained much interesting information as to the geological character of this singular country.

CHAPTER III

       Table of Contents

      RUINED CASTLE CREEK

       ZAMIA CREEK

       BIGGE'S MOUNTAIN

       ALLOWANCE OF FLOUR REDUCED

       NATIVES SPEAR A HORSE

       CHRISTMAS RANGES

       BROWN'S LAGOONS

       THUNDER-STORMS

       ALBINIA DOWNS

       COMET CREEK

       NATIVE CAMP.

      Dec. 1.--I rode to the eastward from our camp, to ascertain how far we were from the water-hole to which I had intended to conduct my party. After having ascended the gullies, and passed the low scrub and cypress-pine thicket which surrounds them, I came into the open forest, and soon found our tracks, and the little creek for which I had steered the day before. This creek, however, soon became a rocky gully, and joined a large creek, trending to the east and south-east. Disheartened and fatigued, I returned to the camp, resolved upon following down the course of the Boyd to the south-west, until I should come into a more open country. On my way back, I fell in with a new system of gullies, south of the creek I had left, and east of the creek on which our camp was, and which I had called "The Creek of the Ruined Castles," because high sandstone rocks, fissured and broken like pillars and walls and the high gates of the ruined castles of Germany, rise from the broad sandy summits of many hills on both sides of the valley.

      When I returned to the camp, Mr. Gilbert told me, that Mr. Roper and John Murphy had been on a mountain towards the head of the main creek, north-west from our camp, and that they had seen an open country before them. I therefore started, on the 2d December, with Mr. Gilbert to examine it. Our admiration of the valley increased at every step. The whole system of creeks and glens which join "Ruined Castle Creek," would form a most excellent cattle station. With the exception of the narrow gorge through which the main creek passes to join the Creek of Palms [Mr. Arrowsmith is of opinion that such a junction is improbable, if the author is alluding to the creek, called Palm Tree Creek, which he fell in with about 60 miles to the S.E.--ED.] to the south-east, which might be shut by a fence not thirty yards long; and of the passable ranges to the north-west, which lead into a new country, and which form the pass seen by Roper and Murphy, it is everywhere surrounded by impassable barriers. Beautiful grass, plenty of water in the lower part of the creek, and useful timber, unite to recommend this locality for such a purpose. The creeks to the east and south-east are also equally adapted for cattle stations. After passing a stony ridge covered with spotted-gum, from which the remarkable features of the country around us--the flat-topped mountain wall, the isolated pillars, the immense heaps of ruins towering over the summits of the mountains--were visible, we descended a slope of silver-leaved Ironbark, and came to a chain of water-holes falling to the east. Travelling in a north-westerly direction, and passing over an openly timbered country, for about two miles, we came to the division of the waters, on a slight ridge which seemed to connect two rather isolated ranges. We followed a watercourse to the northward, which, at seven miles [In the original drawing the watercourse is not more than two miles long, according to Mr. Arrowsmith, so that seven miles must be a mistake.--ED.] lower down, joined an oak-tree creek, coming from the ranges to the eastward. Here water was very scarce; the banks of the creek were covered with Bricklow scrub; and a bush-fire, which had recently swept down the valley, had left very little food for our cattle: the blady-grass, however, had begun to show its young shoots, and the vegetation, on some patches of less recent burnings, looked green. Sterculia (heterophylla?) and the Bottle-tree, were growing in the scrub; and many Wonga-Wonga pigeons (Leucosarcia picata, GOULD.) were started from their roosting-places under the old trees in the sandy bed of the creek. We caught a young curlew; and Mr. Gilbert shot two Wonga-Wongas, and three partridge-pigeons (Geophaps scripta). The latter abound in the silver-leaved Ironbark forest, where the grass has been recently burned.

      After having contended with scrubs, with swamps, and with mountains, we were again doomed to grapple with our old enemy, the silver-leaved Bricklow, and a prickly Acacia with pinnate leaves, much resembling the A. farnesiana of Darling Downs.

      The most remarkable feature in the vegetation; however, was an aborescent Zamia, with a stem from seven to eight or ten feet high, and about nine inches in diameter, and with elongated cones, not yet ripe. In consequence of the prevalence of this plant, I called the creek "Zamia Creek." In the fat-hen flats, over which we travelled in following the watercourse to Zamia creek, I was surprised to find Erythrina, which I had been accustomed to meet with only on the creeks, and at the outskirts of mountain brushes, near the sea-coast. The white cedar (Melia Azedarach) grows also along Zamia Creek, with casuarina, and a species of Leptospermum. On my return to the camp, I found that a party had been out wallabi shooting, and had brought СКАЧАТЬ