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Updated: May 31, 2025
With him about eighty natives came to see us, and encamped close to our tents; forty-five men, sixteen women, and twenty-six children. I sent some of the former out to hunt, but they were not successful. Amongst the natives there were two strangers from Laidley's Ponds, the place to which we were bound. The one was on his way to Moorundi, the other on his return home.
The weather had cleared, and as we were enabled to connect the Darling with the hilly country, I directed Mr. Poole to measure a base line from a point at the back of our camp to the westward. This base line ran along the sandy ridge above the flats of Laidley's Ponds towards Cawndilla, so that we had no detention, but left the Darling on the 17th.
Considering from this that, even if water failed us in the Ana-branch, we should have no difficulty in crossing to the main stream, and that however short our progress might be, it would greatly curtail our journey to Laidley's Ponds, I decided on trying the new route. Mr. He also saw a new bird with a black crest, about the size of a thrush.
We were about 45 miles from Laidley's Ponds; but could not, from the most elevated point, catch a glimpse of the ranges in its neighbourhood. It appeared to me that the river flats were getting smaller on both sides of it, the river still continuing to rise. It was now pouring down a vast body of water into the Murray. There was, however, an abundance of luxuriant pasture along its banks.
I readily submitted to this proposal, and went to Soolo, to stay there till the return of one of those messengers. This afforded me a favourable opportunity of receiving what money Salim Daucari could spare me on Dr Laidley's account.
"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.
This wind, in passing over the Great Desert of Sahara, acquires a very strong attraction for humidity, and parches up every thing exposed to its current. It is, however, reckoned very salutary, particularly to Europeans, who generally recover their health during its continuance. I experienced immediate relief from sickness, both at Dr. Laidley's and at Kamalia, during the harmattan.
A year after Laidley's death, Judge Rhodes, being in New York, breakfasted with Mr. Neckart. He noticed that the editor had grown lean and sallow. "And God knows he had no good looks to spare," smoothing down his own white beard over his comfortable paunch.
"It referred to the affray which took place on the Darling, opposite to Laidley's Ponds, between Major Mitchell and the natives; and I conclude that the circumstance of our being about to proceed to the same place, recalled a transaction which had occurred eight years ago to their minds; for we can trace a connection between the story we heard at the Lake, and what we have heard upon the spot; but all the circumstances were at first told to us with such minuteness, that coupling them with the character Major Mitchell has given of the Darling natives, and the generally received opinion of their ferocity and daring, we could hardly refuse giving a certain degree of credit to what we heard; more especially as it was once or twice confirmed by natives with whom we communicated on our way up the river.
Again upon the Government wishing to communicate with Captain Sturt, letters were taken by the natives up to the Rufus, delivered over to other natives there, and by them carried onwards to Captain Sturt, reaching that gentleman on the eleventh day after they been sent from Moorunde, at Laidley's Ponds, a distance of 300 miles.
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