Page:Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, volume 2.djvu/128

 from which the expedition returned southerly along shore to Port Jackson. Highly important to the colony as were these acquisitions to its geographical knowledge, still the result of the last researches, respecting the termination of the Macquarie, seem, for a time, to have damped the ardour of the Colonial Government for further discoveries in the interior.

Up to that period, (1819) the colonists knew nothing of the southern country, beyond the cow-pastures, where that extensive patch of thicket, called the 'Bargo-brush,' formed a boundary, which had not been penetrated. At length, about this time, both that and the Wombat-brush, in Argyle, were passed, and a third river flowing inland, and called by the aborigines 'Morrumbidgee,' was discovered. Minor excursions were immediately afterwards made by individuals into that interesting country, where many fine tracts of land were found, which have since proved of great value to the grazier. It was not, however, until the winter of 1823, that an extensive tract of undulated country, clear of timber, and watered by the Morrumbidgee, was discovered by a party, conducted by an officer of the navy, at a point nearer to its source than had before been seen. This open country, which was named, upon its discovery, 'Brisbane Downs,' the travellers learnt from a tribe of natives was called in aboriginal language, 'Monaroo;' and its extent was described by the Indians as very considerable. These tine sheep-walks were ascertained, by accurate observations, to lie immediately to the eastward of the meridian of 149°, and were found to extend upwards of forty miles to the southward of the parallel of 36° 15', which appears to be the latitude of their northern skirts. They are further described as being bounded on the east by the coast range of hills, which give an interior direction to the course of the streams, by which they are permanently watered; and on their western side, by those lofty mountains, now known by the native name Warragong.

The elevation of Brisbane Downs, above the sea-shore (distant from them to the eastward about seventy miles), although it has never been measured, cannot be less than two thousand feet; and as they are in higher latitude than other portions of land, within the present boundaries of the colony, the climate may probably be found more congenial to the growth of wool and the constitution of sheep, than that of those extensive tracts of pastoral country, from which the colonists are annually obtaining so many thousand fleeces for the English market. The mean height of any one point of the great Warragong Chain, which appears to extend without interruption to Wilson's Promontory (the southernmost extremity of the Australian continent), has not yet been determined. That portion, however, of what may be called the backbone of