Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia — Volume 2 by Charles Sturt
page 107 of 237 (45%)
page 107 of 237 (45%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
|
similar to one that Mr. Hume shot on the Darling, passed over the tents,
and I found M'Leay, with his usual anxiety, trying to get a shot at them. They had, he told me, descended to water, but they had chosen a spot so difficult of approach without discovery, that he had found it impossible to get within shot of them. RIDGE TO THE SOUTH-EAST. There was a considerable rapid just below our position, which I examined before dark. Not seeing any danger, I requested M'Leay to proceed down it in the boat as soon as he had breakfasted, and to wait for me at the bottom of it. As I wished to ascertain the nature and height of the elevations which Fraser had magnified into something grand, Fraser and I proceeded to the centre of a large plain, stretching from the left bank of the river to the southward. It was bounded to the S.E. by a low scrub; to the S. a thickly wooded ridge appeared to break the level of the country. It extended from east to west for four or five miles, and then gradually declined. At its termination, the country seemed to dip, and a dense fog, as from an extensive sheet of water, enveloped the landscape. The plain was crowded with cockatoos, that were making their morning's repast on the berries of the salsolae and rhagodia, with which it was covered. DISTANT RANGES SEEN. M'Leay had got safely down the rapid, so that as soon as I joined him, we proceeded on our journey. We fell in with the tribe we had already seen, but increased in numbers, and we had hardly left them, when we found another tribe most anxiously awaiting our arrival. We stayed with the last for some time, and exhausted our vocabulary, and exerted our ingenuity to |
|


