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Updated: May 2, 2025
The same rule holds good with regard to animal productions; for example in the southern parts of the continent the Xanthorrhoea affords an inexhaustible supply of fragrant grubs, which an epicure would delight in when once he has so far conquered his prejudices as to taste them; whilst in proceeding to the northward these trees decline in health and growth, until about the parallel of Gantheaume Bay they totally disappear, and even a native finds himself cut off from his ordinary supplies of insects; the same circumstances taking place with regard to the roots and other kinds of food at the same time, the traveller necessarily finds himself reduced to cruel extremities.
The tussock grass has been likened to a palm on a small scale, but altogether it reminded me more of the Xanthorrhoea, or grass-tree of Australia. We saw many seals swimming about among the kelp, and on the shore found the carcases of several which had lately been killed with clubs, each of the skulls having been fractured by a blow at the root of the nose.
The horses wandered quite in the wrong direction, and it was eleven o'clock before we got away from the camp and went north to the sheet of water seen yesterday, where we watered the horses and followed up the creek, as its course here appeared to be from the west. Some more Xanthorrhoea were seen, and several small creeks joined this from the ranges to the north.
Grubs are principally procured by the natives from the Xanthorrhoea or grass-tree, but they are also found in wattle-trees, and in dead timber; those found in the grass-tree have a fragrant aromatic flavour and taste very like a nice nut.
As we passed by, I noticed a solitary desert oak-tree, Casuarina decaisneana, and a number of the Australian grass-trees, Xanthorrhoea. The country was almost destitute of timber, except that upon the tops of the parallel lines of red sandhills, which mostly ran in a north-east and south-west direction, a few stunted specimens of the eucalypt, known as blood-wood or red gum existed.
On Saturday, the 25th of September, being the sixteenth day from the water at the Boundary Dam, we travelled twenty-seven miles, still on our course, through mallee and spinifex, pines, casuarinas, and quandong-trees, and noticed for the first time upon this expedition some very fine specimens of the Australian grass-tree, Xanthorrhoea; the giant mallee were also numerous.
My ride, on that day, was along a ridge, which extended upwards of fifty miles, through a succession of deep ravines, where no objects met the eye except barren sandstone rocks, and stunted trees. With the banksia and xanthorrhoea always in sight, the idea of hopeless sterility is ever present to the mind, for these productions, in sandy soils at least, grow only where nothing else can vegetate.
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