Page:Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, volume 2.djvu/144

 miles below Mount Harris, the flat-lands commence, and there the Macquarie itself ceases to be a river, having no banks, or continued channel, by which to prevent the dispersion of its waters when they rise in rainy seasons. The surface of those flats, however, has not one continued dip, but presents a succession of levels and inclinations, with each a detached lagoon-like channel, hemmed in on all sides by high reeds which catch the waters as they spread; and it is only when these are overflowed that the floods spread over the level, 'until,' as Captain Sturt observes, 'a slight declivity giving them fresh impulse,' they arrive at a second channel, and so spread to a third, until a considerable extent of surrounding country is laid under water. When such a general inundation takes place, as that witnessed in 1818, there is a current through the body of these marshes, setting, agreeably to the configuration of the ground, (as at length shown to us by Captain Sturt,) to the north and north-north-east, where, uniting with the waters of Morissett's ponds, the whole is thrown into the channel of the Castlereagh River.

To the north-west of those marshy grounds, Captain Sturt describes the country as rising, and therefore preventing any flow of the waters of the morass to that point of the compass. This rise of the surface, which I observe is elsewhere described as 'a table-land with scarcely water to support its inhabitants,' may be clearly understood as meaning a series of low terraces of dry forest-land, which present a level tract of ground, or one but slightly undulated, extending, probably, a considerable distance, until a second rise of the ground takes place. And the extreme perpendicular elevation of such a tract above the plane of the marshes is far too inconsiderable to justify its being considered a rising hilly country; nor is its actual mean height above the level of the sea raised in the least, because it has been ascertained that there are upon its desert-like surface a few rocky hills, which, standing far detached from each other, appear, when viewed with the country surrounding the base of each, like so many islands in the ocean. This view of the face of the country bounding the marshes of the Macquarie on the north-west will assuredly be verified, whenever a barometer is carried to that part of the interior.

Finally, before I quit the subject of those low marshy grounds, which have excited so much interest and speculation among geographers since the report of them given by Mr. Oxley, I would briefly remark, that although a drought of unparalleled duration had disposed of their waters, so as to enable Captain Sturt and his party to traverse their bed in a dried up, hardened state, still, whenever a wet season sets in, and rain falls upon the mountainous districts