Page:Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, volume 2.djvu/132

 season, if we except those small quantities of rain which occasionally fall and are caught in the shallow excavations of sandstone rocks on the ridges, from which alone the party of the expedition of 1817 derived their scanty supply, after quitting their boats on the Lachlan River.

To that valuable tract of country, first laid open to our view by the above-mentioned indefatigable persons, the attention of future emigrants will, doubtless, be directed; since, from the fact of its being bounded immediately on the east by the Warragong Chain, no doubts can be entertained of its being found, when occupied, far better watered than the country already located, and less liable to the effects of those droughts which have so frequently distressed the northern parts of the colony,—its higher southern latitude giving it, as a further recommendation, a cooler climate and one which more resembles that of England.

With the exception of my examination of the western and northern sides of Liverpool Plains in the month of May, 1825, which enabled me to furnish something more than what had been previously known of those extensive levels, our stock of geographical knowledge received no accession during either that or the following year. The year 1827, however, a new scene opened to the colonists; for a journey which the late Mr. Oxley had himself at one period contemplated, was determined on, viz., to explore the entirely unknown country, lying on the western side of the dividing range, between Hunter's River in latitude 32° and Moreton Bay in latitude 27° S. For this purpose a well appointed expedition, equipped fully for an absence of five months, was placed by the Colonial Government under my direction.

On the 30th of April of that year, (1827,) having provided myself with the necessary instruments, and with an escort of six servants and eleven horses, I took my departure from a station on an upper branch of Hunter's River, and upon crossing the dividing range to the westward, at a mean elevation above the level of the sea of three thousand and eighty feet, I pursued my journey northerly, through an uninteresting forest country, skirting Liverpool Plains on their eastern side. As it is my intention to lay before the public, erelong, a narrative of this journey, which, in consequence of the long drought by which this part of the country had suffered, cost my party no ordinary exertions, I trust that an outline of it will now be sufficient.

On the 11th of May, we crossed (in latitude 31° 2') Mr. Oxley's track easterly towards Port Macquarie in 1818, and from that point the labours of the expedition commenced on ground previously untrodden by civilized man. It was my original design to