. . . . .

We forgot to mention that there are wonderfully few wrecks on the Darling.
The river boats seldom go down -- their hulls are not built that way --
and if one did go down it wouldn't sink far. But, once down,
a boat is scarcely ever raised again; because, you see, the mud silts up
round it and over it, and glues it, as it were, to the bottom of the river.
Then the forty-foot alligators -- which come down with the "Queenslan' rains",
we suppose -- root in the mud and fill their bellies with
sodden flour and drowned deck-hands.

They tried once to blow up a wreck with dynamite because it (the wreck)
obstructed navigation; but they blew the bottom out of the river instead,
and all the water went through. The Government have been boring for it
ever since. I saw some of the bores myself -- there is one at Coonamble.

There is a yarn along the Darling about a cute Yankee who was invited
up to Bourke to report on a proposed scheme for locking the river.
He arrived towards the end of a long and severe drought,
and was met at the railway station by a deputation of representative bushmen,
who invited him, in the first place, to accompany them to the principal pub --
which he did. He had been observed to study the scenery a good deal
while coming up in the train, but kept his conclusions to himself.
On the way to the pub he had a look at the town, and it was noticed
that he tilted his hat forward very often, and scratched the back of his head
a good deal, and pondered a lot; but he refrained from expressing an opinion
-- even when invited to do so. He guessed that his opinions
wouldn't do much good, anyway, and he calculated that they would keep
till he got back "over our way" -- by which it was reckoned
he meant the States.