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The channel was immediately below us, and continued to the E.S.E. as far as we could trace it. The hills we were upon, were the sandy hills that always bound a coast that is low, and were covered with banksias, casuarina and the grass-tree.
One cannot commit to memory a big river like the Padma, but this meandering little Ichamati, the flow of whose syllables is regulated by the rhythm of the rains, I am gradually making my very own.... It is dusk, the sky getting dark with clouds. The thunder rumbles fitfully, and the wild casuarina clumps bend in waves to the stormy gusts which pass through them.
Another voice, as familiar, almost immediately answered "I only fear that they will return too soon: have patience! in a little while I shall have gnawed through this rope, and then I do not despair of being able to get my hands free also." This was enough to show how matters stood. "Are you alone?" said I, in a low voice, but loud enough to be heard by those beneath the casuarina.
Oct. 23. We travelled in a north-westerly direction, through a Casuarina thicket, but soon entered again into fine open Ironbark forest, with occasionally closer underwood; leaving a Bricklow scrub to our right, we came to a dry creek with a deep channel; which I called "Acacia Creek," from the abundance of several species of Acacia. I called "Dogwood Creek."
While thus blindly groping our way towards the edge of the inlet, I heard a voice almost beside me, which said "Will they never come back? Are they going to leave us here to starve?" The voice was that of Johnny's beyond the possibility of mistake. Turning in the direction from which it proceeded, I saw a little to the right three figures upon the ground at the foot of a large casuarina.
The drooping plumes of the palms, the lance-shaped pandanus leaves, and the delicate, filmy foliage of the casuarina, were all accurately imaged there; the inverted shore below, with its fringe of trees and shrubbery, looking scarcely less substantial and real, than its counterpart above. But as the light increased, these reflections lost their softness, and the clearness of their outlines.
We travelled about north-west to latitude 19 degrees 4 minutes 41 seconds, over a succession of fine flats; one or two of which were almost exclusively timbered with poplar-gum, which always indicated a sound stiff soil. These flats were separated by shallow gullies, and some Casuarina creeks, which come probably from the dividing ridges of the two rivers.
I followed it up about eight miles, when the scrub receded from its left bank, and a fine open extensive flat stretched to the westward. I looked into the Casuarina thickets which occasionally fringed its bank, in search of water; but found none.
From the summit of this sterile mount I had expected at least a favourable view, but to my intense disappointment nothing of the kind was to be seen. Two little hills only, bearing 20 and 14 degrees west of north, were the sole objects higher than the general horizon; the latter was formed entirely of high, red sandhills, with casuarina between.
In eight or nine miles we found that sandhill and casuarina country existed, and swallowed up the unfortunate creek. The main line of ranges continued westerly, and, together with another range in front of us to the north, formed a kind of crescent. No pass appeared to exist between them.
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