Читать книгу Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria онлайн | страница 6

(*Footnote. Kangaroo Point would in my opinion be a healthy site for a township. The ground is sufficiently high along the shore at that place, and without mangroves. We did not find water there, but, as there were a few blacks almost always in that neighbourhood, I have no doubt that there is some surface water, or that it is easily procured by digging.)

On going on shore on the western bank of the Albert River I found within a hundred yards of it a waterhole at which it would be more convenient to water stock than the river, as the banks of it are at this place too steep. Above the junction of the Barkly the Albert River is not navigable for even boats, from its being too full of snags. On the following morning we went up the Barkly on the barge for about two miles, to where it was too full of snags to proceed further up the river by water. We then took a walk over the Plains of Promise and crossed at a point about three miles from where we had left the barge. In doing so we started a black man and woman; they were both old and naked; the former went out of sight by running down the bank and plunging into the river, and the latter climbed up a tree, where, while we remained, she continued speechless. Where we crossed the Barkly it had a narrow muddy bed, the water in which was cool from its being shaded with pandanus, palms, and Leichhardt-trees. A short distance lower we recrossed by a tree which the carpenter felled for that purpose, at a point where the deep water in it is caused in some measure by the rise of the tide; afterwards we followed down the river to the barge. At different places we marked the trees, but did not see any that had been marked previously, nor indeed any traces of any European parties. After walking over the Plains of Promise we went down the river and anchored opposite the point where the cliffs are mentioned in the charts as thirty feet high. In the morning, accompanied by the native troopers Jemmy and Jackie, I went north-westerly over slightly timbered grassy plains, and reached in about a mile a waterhole, and in about another mile a narrow mere, which I called Woods Lake, extending northerly and southerly at least for a mile or so in an unbroken sheet of water. I went southward along the edge of Woods Lake to a clump of box and tea-trees, and while I was marking a tree Jackie shot (chiefly with one discharge of his gun) about half a dozen of whistling-ducks and a large grey crane. As I never saw so many aquatic fowls assembled as were at this place it is to be hoped that, when we reach the Albert River again, we will be able to shoot great quantities of them for fresh food.