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The drays had got so far ahead of me that I did not overtake them before they had halted on the river at a distance of ten miles. The Morumbidgee appeared, on examination, to have increased in breadth, and continued to rise gradually. It is certainly a noble stream, very different from those I had already traced to their termination.
As soon as we passed an angle of the river, I took the bearings of the reach before us, and as we proceeded down it, marked off the description of country, and any remarkable feature. The consequence was, that I laid down every bend of the Murray River, from the Morumbidgee downwards.
He went off without being noticed, and thus lost the reward that would have been bestowed on him had he mentioned his wish to return to Yass. I the more regretted his having sneaked off, because he had had the kindness to put us on a track we could not well lose. Underaliga, is said to be thirty miles from the Morumbidgee. The country between the two has a sameness of character throughout.
The men had caught many in the Morumbidgee, and on our first navigation of the Murray, but whether it was that they had disagreed with them, or that their appetites were palled, or that they were too fatigued after the labour of the day to set the lines, they did not appear to care about them.
Immediately catching at the word, he had pointed to the N.N.W., and, making a sweep with his arms raised towards the sky had intimated, evidently, that a large sheet of water existed in that direction, in the same manner that another black had done on a former occasion: on being further questioned, he stated that this communicated with the Morumbidgee more to the westward, and on my expressing a desire to go to it, he said we could not do so under four days.
We had undoubtedly struck below to the westward of the Colare or Lachlan, and the creek was the channel of communication between it and the Morumbidgee, at least such was the natural conclusion at which I arrived.
To myself personally, the discovery of this river was a circumstance of a particularly gratifying nature, since it not only confirmed the justness of my opinion as to the ultimate fate of the Morumbidgee, and bore me out in the apparently rash and hasty step I had taken at the depot, but assured me of ultimate success in the duty I had to perform.
The Morumbidgee, where we struck it, by its increased size, kept alive our anticipations of its ultimately leading us to some important point.
I had remarked that the Morumbidgee was not, from the depot downwards, so broad or so fine a river as it certainly is at the foot of the mountain ranges, where it gains the level country.
Behind the line of gum-trees, the river suddenly sweeps away to the south, and forms a deep bight of seven miles, when, bearing up again to the N.W. it meets some hills about 10 miles to the W.N.W. of the plain, thus encircling a still more extensive space, that for richness of soil, and for abundance of pasture, can nowhere be excelled; such, though on a smaller scale, are all the flats that adorn the banks of the Morumbidgee, first on one side and then on the other, as the hills close in upon them, from Juggiong to Pondebadgery.
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