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A steady rain poured down all to-day, and as yesterday, the route alternated over and through desert wastes of brush and tangled scrubs, the former telling with great severity on the lacerated feet of the travellers. Their legs had the appearance of having been curried by a machine. At the end of 9 miles they luckily came on to a creek comparatively well-grassed on the banks.
Night came quickly down upon the silent wilderness; and it was long after dark when we made our camps by the bank of the Pas-co-pee, or Blindman's River, and turned adrift the weary horses to graze in a well-grassed meadow lying in one of the curves of the river. We had ridden more than sixty miles that day.
Leaving, he continued his way to the overland telegraph line, which they were destined not to reach without a struggle. More rivers were crossed, and the country undulated between rough ridges and well-grassed flats, and at last, on the 18th August, the Victoria River of Captain Stokes was reached. Now commenced their first privation for want of water.
Instead of the alternative of broken country, stony ridges, or basaltic plains they had toiled over for nearly 80 miles, they now emerged on to fine open well-grassed river flats, lightly timbered, and separated by small spurs of ridges running into them.
At each running stream the packs had to be taken off and carried over. The country traversed was similar to that of yesterday, undulating blood-wood red soil ridges, sufficiently well-grassed, with the everlasting black soil, tea-tree flats, and gullies running between them, some being very wide.
The history of their progress is now monotonous in the extreme, the country through which they travelled presented no great obstacle to the travellers' advance, being well-grassed and watered; and finally on the 6th May they reached the Leichhardt River.
We travelled about twelve miles west-north-west, first over plains, but afterwards, and for the greater part of the stage, over openly timbered well-grassed box-flats, which seemed to bound the plains to the southward; they were drained by no watercourse, but contained many melon-holes.
The country passed over consisted of large level plains and long sand ridges, but they crossed numerous creeks and found more or less water in all of them, and finally got into a well-grassed, pleasing looking country, which greatly cheered them with a prospect of success, when, suddenly, they were confronted by a wall of sand, and for nearly twenty miles toiled over succeeding ridges.
We saw the bones of a Jew fish, and a broken shell of Cymbium, in an old camp of the natives near the lagoon. The apple-gum, the box, and the Moreton Bay ash composed a very open well-grassed forest, between the lagoon and the river; the latter had an E. N. E. and almost easterly course. I called this river or large creek, "Smith's Creek," after Mr.
Between the ranges, beautiful fertile valleys extended; when I say fertile, I mean that the soil was excellent, and the land well-grassed. But there was no cultivation. Not a sod had ever been turned there since the creation of the world, and the whole country wore the peculiar yellow tinge caught from the tall waving tussocks, which is the prevailing feature of New Zealand scenery au naturel.
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