Part 33 (1/2)

After the Northern Expedition had been compelled to return south, (being unable to cross Lake Torrens,) the peninsula of Port Lincoln was examined, and traversed completely round, in all the three sides of the triangle formed by its east and west coasts, and a line from Mount Arden to Streaky Bay. A road overland from Mount Arden was forced through the scrub for a dray; but the country travelled through was of so inhospitable a character as to hold out no prospect of its being generally available for overland communication. One unfortunate individual has since made an attempt to take over a few head of cattle by this route, but was unable to accomplish it, and miserably perished with his whole party from want of water. [Note 32: Vide note to page 154, Vol. I. (Note 11)]

On the northern side of the triangle I have alluded to, or on the line between Mount Arden and Streaky Bay, a singularly high and barren range, named the Gawler Range after His Excellency the Governor, was found consisting of porphoritic granite, extending nearly all the way across, and then stretching out to the north-west in lofty rugged outline as far as the eye could reach; the most remarkable fact connected with this range, was the arid and sterile character of the country in which it was situated, as well as of the range itself, which consisted entirely of rugged barren rocks, without timber or vegetation. There was not a stream or a watercourse of any kind emanating from it; we could find neither spring nor permanent fresh water, and the only supply we procured for ourselves was from the deposits left by very recent rains, and which in a few days more, would have been quite dried up. The soil was in many places saline, and wherever water had lodged in any quant.i.ty (as in lakes of which there were several) it was quite salt.

[Note 33: A small exploring party, under a Mr. Darke, was sent from Port Lincoln in August, 1844, but after getting as far as the Gawler Range were compelled by the inhospitable nature of the country to return. The unfortunate leader was murdered by the natives on his route homewards.]

Continuing the line of coast to the westward, the expedition pa.s.sed through the most wretched and desolate country imaginable, consisting almost entirely of a table-land, or of undulating ridges, covered for the most part with dense scrubs, and almost wholly without either gra.s.s or water. The general elevation of this country was from three to five hundred feet, and all of the tertiary deposit, with primary rocks protruding at intervals.

The first permanent fresh water met with on the surface was a small fresh-water lake, beyond the parallel of 123 degrees E.; but from Mount Arden to that point, a distance of fully 800 miles in a direct line, none whatever was found on the surface (if I except a solitary small spring sunk in the rock at Streaky Bay). During the whole of this vast distance, not a watercourse, not a hollow of any kind was crossed; the only water to be obtained was by digging close to the sea-sh.o.r.e, or the sand-hills of the coast, and even by that means it frequently could not be procured for distances of 150 to 160 miles together. With the exception of the Gawler Range, which lies between Streaky Bay and Mount Arden, this dreary waste was one almost uniform table-land of fossil formation, with an elevation of from three to five hundred feet, covered for the most part by dense impenetrable scrubs, and varied only on its surface by occasional sandy or rocky undulations.

What then can be the nature of that mysterious interior, bounded as it is by a table-land without river or lakes, without watercourses or drainage of any kind, for so vast a distance? Can it be that the whole is one immense interminable desert, or an alternation of deserts and shallow salt lakes like Lake Torrens? Conjecture is set at defiance by the impenetrable arrangements of nature; where, the more we pry into her secrets, the more bewildered and uncertain become all our speculations.

It has been a common and a popular theory to imagine the existence of an inland sea, and this theory has been strengthened and confirmed by the opinion of so talented, so experienced, and so enterprising a traveller as my friend Captain Sturt, in its favour. That gentleman, with the n.o.ble and disinterested enthusiasm by which he has ever been characterised, has once more sacrificed the pleasure and quiet of domestic happiness, at the shrine of enterprise and science. With the ardour of youth, and the perseverance and judgment of riper years, he is even now traversing the trackless wilds, and seeking to lift up that veil which has. .h.i.therto hung over their recesses. May he be successful to the utmost of his wishes, and may he again rejoin in health and safety his many friends, to forget in their approbation and admiration the toils he has encountered, and to enjoy the rewards and laurels which will have been so hardly earned, and so well deserved.

It was in August, 1844, that Captain Sturt set out upon his arduous undertaking, with a numerous and well equipped party, and having provisions calculated to last them for eighteen months. I had the pleasure of accompanying the expedition as far as the Rufus (about 240 miles from Adelaide), to render what a.s.sistance I could, in pa.s.sing up, on friendly terms among the more distant natives of the Murray. Since my return, Captain Sturt has been twice communicated with, and twice heard from, up to the time I left the Colony, on the 21st December, 1844. The last official communication addressed to the Colonial Government will be found in Chapter IX. of Notes on the Aborigines. The following is a copy of a private letter to John Morphett, Esq M.C., and published in the Adelaide Observer of the 9th November, 1844:--

”14th October, 1844.

”I left Lake Victoria, as I told you in a former letter, on the 18th of September, and again cut across the country to the Murray. As we travelled along we saw numerous tracks of wild cattle leading from the marshes to the river, and we encamped at the junction of the river and a lagoon (one of the most beautiful spots you ever saw), just where these tracks were most numerous. In the night therefore we were surrounded by lowing herds, coming to the green pastures of which we had taken possession. In the morning I sent Messrs. Poole and Brown, with Flood my stockman, and Mark to drive in some bullocks, as I was anxious to secure one or two workers. The brush however was too thick, and in galloping through it after a bull, Flood's carbine exploded, and blew off three of the fingers of his right hand. This accident obliged me to remain stationary for two days, notwithstanding my anxiety to get up to the lagoon at Williorara, to ascertain the truth or otherwise of the report I had heard of the ma.s.sacre of a party of overlanders there.

”On the 23rd I reached the junction of the Ana branch with the Murray, discovered by Eyre, and then turned northwards. Running this Ana branch up, I crossed it where the water ceased, and went to the Darling, striking it about fifteen miles above its junction with the Murray. The unlooked-for course of the Darling however kept me longer on its banks than I had antic.i.p.ated; but you can form no idea of the luxuriant verdure of its flats. They far surpa.s.s those of the Murray, both in quant.i.ty and quality of soil; and extended for many miles at a stretch along the river side. We have run up it at a very favourable season, and seen the commencement of its floods; for, two days after we reached it, and found it with scarcely any water in its bed, we observed a fresh in it, indicated by a stronger current. The next morning to our surprise the waters were half-bank high. They had risen six feet during the night, and were carrying everything before them; now they are full sixteen feet above their level, and a most beautiful river it is. Over this said mysterious river, as Major Mitch.e.l.l calls it, the trees drooped like willows, or grew in dark cl.u.s.ters at each turn; the sloping banks were of a vivid green, the flats lightly timbered, and the aspect of the whole neighbourhood cheerful.

”I had hoped that we should have been able to approach the ranges pretty closely along the line of Laidley's Ponds; but fancy our disappointment when we arrived on its banks to find that instead of a mountain stream it was a paltry creek, connecting a lake, now dry, with the river, and that its banks were quite bare. I was therefore obliged to fall back upon the Darling, and have been unable to stir for the last four days by reason of heavy rain.

”On Tuesday I despatched Mr. Poole to the ranges, which are forty miles distant from us, to ascertain if there is water or feed under them; but I have no hope of good tidings, and believe I shall ultimately be obliged to establish myself on the Darling.

”You will be glad to hear, and so ought every body, that we have maintained a most satisfactory intercourse with the natives. The report we had heard referred to Major Mitch.e.l.l's affray with them, and you will not be surprised at their reverting to it, when I tell you that several old men immediately recognized me as having gone down the Murray in a boat, although they could have seen me for an hour or two only, and fifteen years have now elapsed since I went down the river. I suppose we misunderstood the story; but most a.s.suredly I fully antic.i.p.ated we should, sooner or later, come on some dreadful acene or other, and I came up fully prepared to act; but the natives have been exceedingly quiet, nor have we seen a weapon in the hands of any of them: in truth I have been quite astonished at the change in the blacks; for instead of collecting in a body, they have visited us with their wives and children, and have behaved in the most quiet manner. We may attribute this in part to our own treatment of the natives, and in part to Eyre's influence over them, which is very extensive, and has been productive of great good. The account the natives give of the distant interior is very discouraging. It is nothing more however than what I expected. They say that beyond the hills it is all sand and rocks; that there is neither gra.s.s or water, or wood; and that it is awfully hot. This last feature appears to terrify them. They say that they are obliged to take wood to the hills for fire, and that they clamber up the rocks on the hills; that when there is water there, it is in deep holes from which they are obliged to sponge it up and squeeze it out to drink. I do not in truth think that any of the natives have been beyond the hills, and that the country is perfectly impracticable.

”We are now not more than two hundred and fifteen feet above the sea, with a declining country to the north-west, and the general dip of the continent to the south-west. What is the natural inference where there is not a single river emptying itself upon the coast, but that there is an internal basin? Such a country can only be penetrated by cool calculation and determined perseverance. I have sat down before it as a besieger before a fortress, to make my approaches with the same systematic regularity. I must cut hay and send forage and water in advance, as far as I can. I have the means of taking sixteen days' water and feed for two horses and three men; and if I can throw my supplies one hundred miles in advance, I shall be able to go two hundred miles more beyond that point, at the rate of thirty miles a-day, one of us walking whilst two rode.

Surely at such a distance some new feature will open to reward our efforts! My own opinion is, that an inland sea will bring us up ere long--then how shall we get the boat upon it? 'Why,' you will say, 'necessity is the mother of invention.' You will find some means or other, no doubt; and so we will. However, under any circ.u.mstances, depend upon it I will either lift up or tear down the curtain which hides the interior from us, so look out for the next accounts from me as of the most interesting kind, as solving this great problem, or shutting the door to discovery from this side the continent for ever.

”P.S. Poole has just returned from the ranges. I have not time to write over again. He says that there are high ranges to N. and N.W. and water,--a sea extending along the horizon from S.W. by W., to ten E. of N. in which there are a number of islands and lofty ranges as far as the eye can reach. What is all this? Are we to be prosperous? I hope so; and I am sure you do. To-morrow we start for the ranges, and then for the waters,--the strange waters on which boat never swam, and over which flag never floated. But both shall are long. We have the heart of the interior laid open to us, and shall be off with a flowing sheet in a few days.

Poole says that the sea was a deep blue, and that in the midst of it there was a conical island of great height. When will you hear from me again?”

From this communication, Captain Sturt appears to be sanguine of having realized the long hoped for sea, and at last of having found a key to the centre of the continent. Most sincerely do I hope that this may be the case, and that the next accounts may more than confirm such satisfactory intelligence.

My own impressions were always decidedly opposed to the idea of an inland sea, nor have I changed them in the least, now that circ.u.mstances amounting almost to proof, seem to favour that opinion.

Entertaining, as I do, the highest respect for the opinion of one so every way capable of forming a correct judgment as Captain Sturt, it is with considerable diffidence that I advance any conjectures in opposition to his, and especially so, as I may be thought presumptuous in doing so in the face of the accounts received. Until these accounts, however, are further confirmed, the question still remains as it was; and it may perhaps not be out of place to allude to some of the reasons which have led me to form an opinion somewhat different from that entertained by Captain Sturt, and which I have been compelled to arrive at after a long personal experience, a closer approach to the interior, and a more extensive personal examination of the continent, than any other traveller has. .h.i.therto made. In the course of that experience, I have never met with the slightest circ.u.mstance to lead me to imagine that there should be an inland sea, still less a deep navigable one, and having an outer communication with the ocean. I can readily suppose, and, in fact, I do so believe, that a considerable portion of the interior consists of the beds or basins of salt lakes or swamps, as Lake Torrens, and some of which might be of great extent. I think, also, that these alternate, with sandy deserts, and that probably at intervals, there are many isolated ranges, like the Gawler range, and which, perhaps, even in some places may form a connection of links across the continent, could any favourable point be obtained for commencing the examination.

It is very possible that among these ranges, intervals of a better or even of a rich and fertile country might be met with.

The suggestion thrown out by Captain Sturt a few years ago, that Australia might formerly have been an Archipelago of islands, appears to me to have been a happy idea, and to afford the most rational and satisfactory way of accounting for many of the peculiarities observable upon its surface or in its structure. That it has only recently (compared with other countries) obtained its present elevation, is often forcibly impressed upon the traveller, by the appearance of the country he is traversing, but no where have I found this to be the case in a greater degree, than whilst exploring that part of it, north of Spencer's Gulf, where a great portion of the low lands intervening, between the base of Flinders range, and the bed of Lake Torrens, presents the appearance of a succession of rounded undulations of sand or pebbles washed perfectly smooth and even, looking like waves of the sea, and seeming as if they had not been very many centuries deserted by the element that had moulded them into their present form. In this singular district I found scattered at intervals throughout the whole area inclosed by, but south of, Lake Torrens, many steep-sided fragments of a table land, [Note 34 at end of para.] which had evidently been washed to pieces by the violent action of water, and which appeared to have been originally, of nearly the same general elevation as the table lands to the westward. It seems to me, that these table lands have formerly been the bed of the ocean, and this opinion is fully borne out by the many marine remains, fossil sh.e.l.ls, and banks of oyster sh.e.l.ls, [Note 35 at end of para.] which are frequently to be met with embedded in them. What are now the ranges of the continent would therefore formerly have been but rocks or islands, and if this supposition be true, there are still hopes that some other islands are scattered over the immense s.p.a.ce occupied by Australia, and which may be of as rich and fertile a character, as any that are yet known. Thus if the intervening extent of desert lying between any of the known portions of Australia, and what may be considered as having been the next island, can be ascertained and crossed over, new and valuable regions may yet be offered for the extension of the pastoral interest of our Colonies, and for the general spread of civilization and improvement.

[Note 34: ”An hundred miles above this, I pa.s.sed a curious feature, called the ”Square Hills” (plate 123 ). I landed my canoe and went ash.o.r.e, and to their tops to examine them. Though they appeared to be near the river, I found it half a day's journey to travel to and from them; they being several miles from the river. On ascending them I found them to be two or three hundred feet high, and rising on their sides at an angle of 45 deg.