- On returning, we found our party encamped about four miles
lower down the river than where I had left them.
I then removed them to a
more convenient spot about two miles still lower down (lat. 23 degrees 21
minutes 30 seconds). Just at the moment we were preparing to shoot the
bullock, we heard the cooee of a native, and in a short time two men were
seen approaching and apparently desirous of having a parley. Accordingly,
I went up to them; the elder, a well made man, had his left front tooth
out, whilst the younger had all his teeth perfect; he was of a muscular
and powerful figure, but, like the generality of Australian aborigines,
had rather slender bones; he had a splendid pair of moustachios, but his
beard was thin. They spoke a language entirely different from that of the
natives of Darling Downs, but "yarrai" still meant water. Charley, who
conversed with them for some time, told me that they had informed him, as
well as he could understand, that the Mackenzie flowed to the north-east.
Brown found an empty seed-vessel of the Nelumbium, in their camp. At
sunset we killed our bullock, and during the 17th and 18th occupied
ourselves in cutting up the meat, drying it in the sun, frying the fat,
preparing the hide, and greasing our harness. Charley, in riding after
the horses, came to some fine lagoons, which were surrounded by a deep
green belt of Nelumbiums. This plant grows, with a simple tap root, in
the deep soft mud, bearing one large peltate leaf on a leaf stalk, about
eight feet high, and from twelve to eighteen inches in diameter, the
flower-stalk being of the same length or even longer, crowned with a pink
flower resembling that of a Nymphaea, but much larger: its seed-vessel is
a large cone, with perpendicular holes in its cellular tissue, containing
seeds, about three quarters of an inch in length. We found the following
shells in the river, viz.; two species of Melania, a Paludina, the
lanceolate Limnaea, a cone-shaped Physa (?), a Cyclas with longitudinal
ribs, and the Unio before described. Murphy shot an Ostioglossum, a
Malacopterygious fish, about three feet long, with very large scales,
each scale having a pink spot. We afterwards found this fish in the
waters flowing into the Gulf of Carpentaria; both on its eastern and
western sides: and, according to the natives of Port Essington, to whom I
showed the dried specimen, it is also found in the permanent water-holes
of the Cobourg peninsula.
Jan. 18. - Leaving my party to complete the process of drying and packing
the charqui, I started with my two black companions to examine the
country to the north-west. After passing the gullies in the immediate
neighbourhood of the river, we came to sandstone ridges covered with an
almost impenetrable scrub; chiefly composed of stiff and prickly shrubs,
many of them dead, with dry branches filling the intervals.
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