Page:Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, volume 2.djvu/126

 his journey homeward, little thinking, that could he have penetrated but twenty miles farther to the S.W., he would have arrived at the Morrumbidgee [sic] River, at that time not known in any part of its course, and only recently ascertained (although long supposed) to receive the drainings of the Lachlan Marshes. It may here be worthy of remark, that, in retracing their steps over those wet unhealthy levels to the hills which skirted them on their eastern side, Mr. Oxley and his party repeatedly witnessed, in the morning before the sun had risen many degrees above the horizon, the singular appearance of the mirage, or the extraordinary effect of refraction upon those apparently unbounded plains. In one direction they beheld, with surprise, the few straggling trees, the line of which separated one expanse of plain from another, with their rounded heads suspended in the air, being apparently separated from their trunks by a watery medium; whilst in another were distinctly traced, on the verge of the distant horizon, an outline of hills, with pointed or conical summits, and bluff precipitous terminations. These, however, had no actual existence; for, no sooner had the day advanced, than the cones became truncated—the aerial ridge began to break and dissolve, and the whole soon afterwards disappeared. After a severe march of six days, the travellers regained the rising grounds, and crossing the Lachlan with some difficulty, by means of a raft, they quitted that turbid stream altogether, which had become suddenly swollen by floods from the eastward. The party now shaped a more northern course homewards, than they otherwise would have done, in hopes of meeting with the long-lost Macquarie River, which they had not seen since they quitted Bathurst, the downs of which it waters. All travellers, in exploring new tracts of country, are subjected more or less to sudden vicissitudes: in this expedition to trace the source of the Lachlan, these were numerous, and oftentimes of a distressing character. The simple mention of one of these changes, arising out of the circumstances of the country, may here suffice. Five weeks were employed in traversing those steppes over which the waters of the Lachlan are dispersed, and on no one occasion, during that period, did the party meet with a dry spot, on which to encamp at the close of the day. On the contrary, comfortless as it really was, still, having been for sometime accustomed to accommodate themselves to circumstances, they cheerfully sought repose from the fatigues of the day, upon any part of those wet plains, where exhaustion, and the approaching night, had obliged them to halt.

On leaving the right bank of the Lachlan, however, Mr. Oxley entered on a country, in point of character, the very reverse of that which he had recently quitted. For nearly a hundred miles the expedition had to encounter those privations, which are inevi-