Page:The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, Tuesday 15 April 1834.djvu/3

 AUSTRALIAN ALPS EXPEDITION.

To the Editor of the Sydney Gazette. SIR, I beg to inform you, for the information of our respected community, that the expedition, undertaken at my own private and very circumscribed means, has surpassed by its results, my most sanguine expectations. After passing and investigating Goulburn, Bridalbane, Gonderoo, and Limestone Plains, I passed the limits of the Colony at the Eastern side of the Tindery Mountain. Visiting many of the stations, scattered about the interesting and important down of Menero, I crossed the Snowy River, and brought my cart so far as Mutong, situated about the 37 ° S. L. and 148 E. L. As it was impossible to go farther—nobis ubi de fuit orbis—I converted my cart horse into a pack horse, and en ered by Westall's Opening the very heart of the Australian Alps. The 4th of March, at 3, my thermometer ranged only 25° , and my water-pots were covered with ice an inch thick. The 6th of March, at 8, I was on the top of Mount William, the absolute altitude of which is, according to the preliminary calculations I was able to make at the time, from 5 to 7,000 feet, and therefore by far the highest point ever reached by any traveller on the Australian Continent. This alpine country exhibited to me very interesting observations; the vegetation, for instance, possessing many representants of the European Flora under similar localises. The genera of Gentiana, Arnica, Vaccinium, &c, were represented by analogous plant, which however are all undescribed. From this elevated position I discovered towards SSW. a very extensive plain, called by the natives Omeo. According to the information I got of the only man of the Menero tribe, who had been once at this plain, it contains a lake, bigger than Lake George. It was therefore now my taOc to reach this interesting and important place. After my return from the mountains, I hired four men on horseback, and entered a second time the vast scenery of the Australian Alps. I ascended Mount Duram Birmungi, where, at almost the half of this journey, I was obliged to lead my horse and to go on foot. So I arrived for the fourth time at the banks of the Snowy River, where its breadth is about 200 yards. There I found a pass, formed by two high mountains, and was only one and a half day's journey distant from Stanley's Plains. But the shortness of my provisions, and the behaviour of the four naen (who were unluckily not my own), obliged me to go back. However, the discovery of Pass Britannia will, before long, become of a great importance to the Colony, this being the place where a road, connecting Twofold Bay with the Murrumbidgee and the other SW. parts of the Colony may be executed. The Snowy River must, according to its size at the place I saw it, become very soon navigable. The farthest point I made was 60 miles North from Bass's Straits.—Sistitnus tandem.—I am now on my return to Sydney. My cart is entirely loaded with natural history objects, amongst which are several bottles of a mineral spring of an acidulous, alcaline nature, from Richard Bourke's Spring, on Menero. Yours, regardfully, DR. J. LHOTSKY, F. R. Bot. S. of Bavaria, &c. Jirabombra, on Limestone Plains, 5th April, 1834.