Narrative of the Voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake Volume Ii Part 11

August 8.

At daylight we were afoot and breakfasted, and started immediately after.

We travelled up the hills all day, but made very little progress, owing to the great labour of clearing, and the numerous steep ascents we met with. We fortunately found water in a low place, and with difficulty lighted a fire, everything being saturated with rain. We then laid down and endeavoured to sleep, but were unable to do so from the number of small leeches which attacked us. I was obliged to get up several times in the night, and in the morning I found myself covered with blood.

August 9.

We started at daylight, although it was raining, and continued to do so all day; about six o'clock in the evening we reached a small river, running rapidly over rocks, and deep in some places. Its course was north-easterly, but it turned north, a little below where we first came upon it. We camped by the side of it, it being too late to cross, although there was open forest ground on the other side. The open ground on the coast side of the range was considerably lower than that on the other, the highest part of our track being, according to Mr. Kennedy's barometrical observations, upwards of two thousand feet above the level of the sea. The soil was a strong loam of a dark colour, owing to the admixture of a great deal of decomposed vegetable matter; rock projected in many places, and in those parts where the rocks were near the surface, Callitris (cypress pine) grew. In the deeper soil were large trees of the genera Castanospermum, Lophostemon, and Cedrela, mingled with Achras australis, Calamus (climbing palm), Seaforthia, d.i.c.ksonia, Osmunda, large shrubs of Alyxia; several very interesting Orchideae were also found in this place. We also discovered a great many snails, with very large sh.e.l.ls of a greyish colour. One I found on the bushes with an operculum--this I gave to Wall.

August 10.

This morning we took the sheep and horses to a spot in the river where the current was not so strong, and drove them across. The sheep followed the horses like dogs. We then cut down three small straight trees, and made a bridge across a deep channel which ran between two rocks which projected out of the water, across which we carried our stores on our backs. All the things were got over before dark, after which we made a large fire to dry ourselves, having been wet to the waist all day.

Niblett, who had been very unwell for three or four days, was taken much worse to-day. The position of our camp here was about 17 degrees 48 minutes South lat.i.tude, 145 degrees 20 minutes East longitude. We this day crossed the range, and prepared to commence our journey on the other side.

August 11.

We remained this day at the camp to give the horses a rest after their harra.s.sing journey over the range.

August 12.

Proceeding about five miles over uneven open forest ground, with isolated blocks of rock, we camped by a chain of rocky waterholes. The trees growing here were casuarina, box, apple-gum, and ironbark.

August 13.

Sunday. Prayers as usual at eleven o'clock.

August 14.

Complaint was made to Mr. Kennedy of the waste and extravagant use of the flour and sugar by Niblett, who had the charge of the stores. Mr. Kennedy immediately proceeded to examine the remainder of the stores, when he found that Niblett had been making false returns of the stores issued weekly. Up to this time Mr. Kennedy, Niblett, and Douglas (who waited on Mr. Kennedy) had messed together, apart from the other ten. Niblett took charge of the ration for the smaller mess, and usually cooked it himself, the ration being taken out weekly from that weighed for the whole party.

Besides issuing a larger ration to his own mess, Niblett had taken a great deal from the stores for himself.

On finding this out, Mr. Kennedy requested me to take charge of the stores, and issue them to the cook for the week, and from this date we all messed together. We had at this time about seven hundred pounds flour left. Everything was weighed in the presence of the whole party before I took charge, and I always weighed out every week's ration in the presence of the cook and two other parties. At this camp it was found necessary to reduce our ration to the following scale per week; fifty pounds flour, twelve pounds sugar, two and three-quarter pounds tea, and the sheep as before--one every second day. After the ration was cooked, it was divided by the cook at every meal. We this day burned our sheepfold to lighten our loads a little.

August 15.

We were cutting through scrub nearly all day, and crossed several small creeks running westward. This day the horse carrying my specimens had become so poor and weak that he fell five different times, and we were obliged to relieve him of his load, which was now placed on one of Mr.

Kennedy's horses; but we soon found that even without a load he could not travel. We took off his saddle, bridle, and tether rope, and left him behind on a spot of good gra.s.s, where plenty of water was to be found.

The country here had a rugged and broken appearance; huge blocks of rock were lying on the open ground, sometimes one irregularly placed on the top of another, and of curious shapes. The hills as well as the valleys were generally covered with good gra.s.s, excepting in the scrub. On some of the hills the rocks were shivered into irregular pieces, and displayed crystals of quartz, small laminae of mica, and occasionally hornblende.

This evening we camped by the side of a fine casuarina creek, coming from the north-east. Immediately over our camp its waters ran over a very hard trap-rock of a black colour, the soil a stiff loam.

August 16.

We travelled on for the most part of this day over irregular, barren, stony ridges, and gullies, intersected by numerous small creeks, and abounding in rocky holes, all containing plenty of water.

Two more of our horses fell several times this day; one of them being very old, and so weak that we were obliged to lift him up. We now made up our minds for the first time, to make our horses, when too weak to travel, available for food; we therefore killed him, and took meat enough from his carca.s.s to serve our party for two days, and by this means we saved a sheep. We boiled the heart, liver, and a piece of the meat to serve us for our breakfast next day. We camped in the evening in the midst of rocky, broken hills, covered with dwarf shrubs and stunted gumtrees; the soil in which they grew appearing more sandy than what we had yet pa.s.sed on this side of the range. The shrubs here were Dodonaea, Fabricia, Daviesia, Jacksonia, and two or three dwarf species of acacia, one of which was very showy, about three feet high, with very small oblong, sericeous phyllodia, and globular heads of bright yellow flowers, produced in great abundance on axillary fascicles; also a very fine leguminous shrub, bearing the habit and appearance of Callistachys, with fine terminal spikes of purple decandrous flowers, with two small bracteae on the foot-stalk of each flower, and with stipulate, oval, lanceolate leaves, tomentose beneath, legumes small and flattened, three to six-seeded, with an arillus as large as the seed; these were flowering from four to twelve feet high. There was plenty of gra.s.s in the valleys of the creeks. To the South-West on the hills the gra.s.ses were Restio, Xerotes, and a spiny gra.s.s, which neither the horses nor the sheep would eat.

August 17.

This morning we commenced to prepare our breakfast of horse-flesh. I confess we did not feel much appet.i.te for the repast, and some would not eat it at all; but our scruples soon gave way beneath the pangs of hunger, and at supper every man of the party ate heartily of it, and afterwards each one claimed his share of the mess with great avidity. The country to the north and north-west--the course we intended to pursue--looking very rugged and broken, we were discouraged from proceeding further this day, as the weak state of our horses prevented us making almost any progress. We therefore camped by the side of a small rocky creek, winding through the mountains in all directions.

August 18.

Shortly after starting this morning we crossed a creek, running south-west, with a few arborescent Callistemons growing out of the rocks here and there. The horse which Mr. Wall had been riding had grown so weak that it was unable to travel, even with nothing to carry but the saddle. As we were pa.s.sing along the side of a hill, he fell and rolled down into a gully. Being quite a young horse we thought he might regain strength, and did not like to kill him, so we left him and proceeded to find a good place for camping, which we did after travelling about four miles in the north-west direction, by the side of a fine river, with steep reedy banks, lined with large casuarinas and flooded-gum trees, and abundance of gra.s.s growing in the valley of the river. At this camp the feet of our horses were all carefully examined by Costigan, who was a blacksmith: it was also his duty to mark the number of each of our camps on some adjacent tree.

August 19.

Wall rode back to see if he could bring up the horse we had left behind, but on reaching the spot found him dead; one of our kangaroo-dogs had also stopped behind by the horse, being unable to follow us to the camp.

We had the good luck to succeed in catching several fish in the river, and, what was better, shot a fine wallaby, which saved us another sheep.

We had all along been particularly unfortunate in getting anything from the bush to add to our mess, not having been able either to shoot or catch anything for some time past except a few pigeons and two or three brown hawks.

The river by which we were camped was running west by south: below our camp it was not nearly so wide as at the spot where we came upon it.

Where it turned through the hills its banks were rocky and steep, and the bed narrow, but running rapidly. The hills here, as well as the valley of the river, were well covered with gra.s.s. The position of the camp was about 17 degrees 30 minutes south lat.i.tude, 145 degrees 12 minutes east longitude.

August 20, 21, and 22.

During the whole of these three days we travelled over undulating open land, wooded pretty thickly with stringy-bark, box, and apple-gum, interspersed with occasional sandy flats, producing a broad-leafed Melaleuca, and a pretty species of Grevillea, with pinnatifid, silvery leaves. Neither the Melaleuca nor the Grevillea grew more than twenty feet high. On the flats we found a great number of ant-hills, remarkable for their height and size; they were of various forms, but chiefly conical, some of them rose ten feet high. From the appearance of the ant-hills I should take the sub-soil to be of a reddish clay.

August 23.

We camped by the side of a creek running to the westward, with rather a broad bed, and steep banks of strong clay. There was no water in the creeks except in holes.

A tribe of natives, from eighteen to twenty in number, were seen coming down the creek, each carrying a large bundle of spears. Three of our party left the camp and went towards them, carrying in their hands green boughs, and making signs to the blacks to lay down their spears and come to us. After making signals to them for some minutes, three or four of them laid down their spears and approached us. I went back to the camp and fetched a few fish-hooks, and a tin plate marked with Mr. Kennedy's initials; having presented them with these they went away and appeared quite friendly. Shortly after we had camped, G.o.ddard and Jackey went out for the purpose of shooting wallabies; they parted company at the base of a hill, intending to go round and meet on the other side, but missing each other, Jackey returned to the camp without his companion. To our great alarm G.o.ddard did not return all night, although we kept up a good fire as a beacon to show him where we were camped, and fired a pistol every five minutes during the night.

August 24.

Three of our party, accompanied by Jackey, rode to the spot where the latter had left G.o.ddard on the previous day, intending, if possible, to track him, and succeeded in doing so for some distance to the eastward, but then coming to some stony ground, they lost the track.

They returned in about six hours, hoping to find him at the camp, but were disappointed. We now began to fear that our companion was lost, and poor Jackey displayed great uneasiness, fearing that he might be blamed for leaving him, and repeatedly saying that he did not wish G.o.ddard to leave the camp at all, and that he had waited for him some time on the opposite side of the hill, where they were to meet. Four fresh horses were saddled, and Jackey, with Mr. Kennedy, Wall, and Mitch.e.l.l, were just on the point of starting to renew the search, when to our great joy we observed him at a distance, approaching the camp. It would have been sadly discouraging to the whole party to have lost one of our companions in so wild and desolate a spot. We made but a short stage to-day in a northerly direction, and camped by the side of a creek running west by south, which, with the last two creeks we had pa.s.sed, we doubted not, from the appearance of the country, ran into the river we had crossed on the 20th instant. The country appeared to fall considerably to the westward. All the rivers and large creeks we had seen on this side the range (that crossed on the 10th instant) rose in or near the coast range, and appeared to run westerly across the peninsula into the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Although few of them appeared to be constantly running, yet there is an abundance of water to be found in holes and reaches of the rivers and creeks. Where there was any scrub by the side of the creeks, it was composed princ.i.p.ally of the climbing palm (Calamus), Glyceria, Kennedya, Mucuna, and a strong growing Ipomoea, with herbaceo-fibrous roots and palmate leaves; and in a few places bamboos were growing.

The trees were, Eugenias, Terminalias, Castanospermums, with two or three kinds of deciduous figs, bearing large bunches of yellowish fruit on the trunks. Although we frequently partook of these figs I found they did not agree with us; three or four of the party who frequently ate a great quant.i.ty, although advised not to do so, suffered severely from pain in the head and swelling of the eyes. The forest trees on the ironstone ridges were stringy-bark, and on the gra.s.sy hills box, Moreton Bay ash, and a tree belonging to the natural order Leguminosae, with axillary racemes of white apetalous flowers, long, broad, flat, many-seeded legumes, large, bipinnate leaves, leaflets oval, one inch long, and having dark fissured bark; on the flat stiff soil grew ironbark, apple-tree, and another species of Angophora, with long lanceolate leaves, seed vessels as large as the egg of a common fowl and a smooth yellow bark.

August 27.

This day being Sunday we had prayers at eleven o'clock. We saved the blood of the sheep we had killed for today's food, and having cut up the heart, liver, and kidneys, we mixed it all with a little flour and boiled it for breakfast. By this means we made some small saving, and it was a dish that we were very fond of. We saved all the wool that we could get from our sheep, for the purpose of stuffing our saddles, a process which was frequently required, owing to the poor condition of our horses.

August 28.

We started early this morning, but had not travelled far when one of our horses fell from weakness; we placed him on his legs four times during the day, but finding the poor animal could not walk, we shot him and took sufficient meat from him with us to last us two days. After making but a short stage, over ironstone ridges, covered with stringy-bark, and loamy flats, producing Melaleucas and Grevilleas, we camped beside a small creek, in the sandy bed of which there was no water, but from which we soon obtained some by digging a hole about two feet deep. We afterwards found there was plenty of water in the creek higher up to the eastward.

August 29.

We were obliged to leave another horse behind us this morning as he was quite unable to travel. We camped by the sandy bed of a very broad river, with water only in reaches and holes. There is, however, evidently a great deal of water running here occasionally, as the bed of the river was six or seven hundred yards wide, with two or three channels. The flood-marks on the trees were fifteen feet high; it has a north-easterly course; its bed was composed in places of large blocks of granite and trap-rock, which was very difficult to walk upon, being very slippery.

Fine melaleucas were growing on each side, which with their long pendulous shoots and narrow silvery leaves, afforded a fine shade from the heat of the sun. There was plenty both of gra.s.s and water for the horses, but most of them continued to grow weaker.

August 30 and 31.

The country was very mountainous and so full of deep gullies, that we were frequently obliged to follow the course of a rocky creek, the turnings of which were very intricate; to add to our difficulties, many of the hills were covered with scrub so thickly that it was with much difficulty that we could pursue our course through it. We had intended to have kept along the bank of the river, thinking it might lead us to Princess Charlotte's Bay, and although unable to do so, we did not as yet lose sight of the river altogether.