The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 Part 30

The South Australian Government soon after sent a survey steamer to the group called Sir Edward Pellew's Islands, which had not been visited since the days of Flinders. The mouth of the Macarthur was found and sounded, and shortly afterwards a towns.h.i.+p was formed at the head of navigation. The explorations conducted on this river led to a good road being formed from the interior tableland to the coast and the settlement of much new country.

The whole of the territory east of the overland line was now rapidly becoming settled, and the explorations made by Mr. Macphee east of Daly Waters may be said to have concluded the list of expeditions between the overland line and the Queensland border.

In 1883 the South Australian Government determined to complete the exploration of Arnheim's Land, and Mr. David Lindsay was dispatched on the mission. He left Palmerston on the 4th June, and proceeded, by way of the Katherine, to the country north of the Roper River. From there they proceeded to Blue Mud Bay, and, on the way, had a narrow escape from being ma.s.sacred by the natives, who speared four horses, and made an attempt to surprise the camp. Lindsay got entangled in the broken tableland that caused such trouble to Leichhardt, and, with one misfortune and another, lost a great number of his horses-in fact, at one time, he antic.i.p.ated having to abandon them all, and make his way into the telegraph station on foot. On the whole, the country pa.s.sed over was favourable for settlement; in fact, the flats on some portions of his course were first-cla.s.s sugar country.

Another journey was undertaken about this time by Messrs. O'Donnell and Carr Boyd into Western Australia, starting from the same place as Lindsay, namely, the Katherine telegraph station. The expedition succeeded in finding a large amount of pastoral country, but no new geographical discoveries of any importance were made.

Meantime, the discovery of gold in the Kimberley district of Western Australia led to that province being searched by small prospecting parties, and every creek and watercourse becoming known. This has left but little of the coastal lands still unexplored in Australia, and there is scant chance of anything noticeable being found in the interior beyond what we can fairly conjecture. The utmost an explorer can now hope to find there is some permanent lagoon or spring, affording a stand-by for the pastoralist. No such streams as the Murray or Darling will ever again gladden the eyes of the traveller in the interior,

The greater part of the territory still left to explore is situated in one colony--that of Western Australia, and, although the interior has been successively crossed by so many different men, there yet remains a large area which may be called unknown. Of what the end will be it is hard to say. Shall we find it bear out the gloomy predictions of Warburton and Giles? or the more hopeful one of Forest? One thing we do know--that, year after year, use is being found for the most repellent country. When we look back at the verdict p.r.o.nounced against the interior of Australia by the early explorers, and how it has been falsified by time there is ground for hoping that even the most despised portions of our continent will yet be found available for something.

That, in spite of the monotony of the Great Plain, it is strange to note the fascination it has had for many of the most renowned explorers.

Sturt, after being reduced to semi-blindness, found himself compelled to struggle with the desert once more. Eyre, left alone in the wilderness, after his awful experience at the head of the Great Bight, still longed to venture again, and accompanied his friend Sturt as far as ever his duties permitted him. Leichhardt died in harness somewhere in Australia, and Kennedy lost his life in his desire to emulate his former chief, Mitch.e.l.l. Even the very sterility of the great solitude seems to have been, in its way, a lure to drag men back to encounter it once more.

Knowing now as much as we do of the interior, we can hardly help being amused at the theories propounded in the old days by some of the earlier travellers. Oxley was, we know, wedded to the idea of an inland sea.

Sturt, too, when he looked on the stony desert, saw in it but the dry channel of some old ocean current; and Eyre was convinced that the interior was nothing but a parched and and desert. One after another, these fallacies were exploded, and now we find that human and animal life can as easily be adapted to the central plain as elsewhere.

But the want of knowledge displayed by the natives of anything beyond their immediate surroundings, was one great difficulty in the way of the explorers. The blackfellow of Australia seemed to partake largely of the country he lived in. His whole life was one fight for existence, and not even the sudden advent of a strange race could do more than stir him to a languid curiosity. Bounded, as he always had been, by his surroundings, and never venturing beyond tribal limits, what information he was able to impart was, as a rule, meagre and misleading, and without any good result in the way of a.s.sistance to the explorer. True, we find exceptions to this amongst them; two instances may be quoted as exemplifying two different phases of the native character. One is a picture from Sturt's journal, the other from Mitch.e.l.l.

Sturt and his companions were returning to the depot from one of their northern efforts. Suddenly they came across a party of worn and thirsty natives. What little water the whites had with them they gave them, but it was only a mouthful a-piece, and the natives indicating by signs that they were bound for some distant waterhole, disappeared at a smart trot across the sandhills. They apparently expressed no surprise at the sudden meeting in the desert, although they could not have had the slightest conception of white men before. They seem to have accepted their presence and the friendly drink of water as only a part of their strange existence.

Far different was the conduct of the Darling River blacks, who so resented Mitch.e.l.l's appearance, that they travelled over some hundreds of miles to attack him on his second visit. The ingenuity with which they planned an attack on the party was a rather remarkable thing in the annals of exploration. Thinking that the clothing of the whites rendered them secure against spears, two men were told off for each member of the party, one to hold the victim whilst the other clubbed him. Fortunately the scheme was fathomed by one of the lubras with the party; but it showed very deep-seated animosity and dislike.

The intercourse, then, that the travellers could expect from the natives was either pa.s.sive ignorance or violent hostility. On the few occasions when their services were made use of it amounted only to finding some scanty well. Again, the nature of the country was so persistently opposed to all the pre conceived notions that the first arrivals brought to the country. It would seem but rational to suppose that a river or creek would ultimately lead to somewhere, a larger channel, or the sea; but the rivers of the plain lived and died without any defined end, and to follow their courses only resulted in disappointment. Add to all this a dry and hot climate, and we cannot wonder at the slow progress made in the advance of the first half of the century.

There is little doubt that had fortune turned the prows of the Dutch vessels on to the north-east coast, instead of the rough and rugged sh.o.r.es of the west, Australia would have seen settlement long before the date of Phillip's landing. But the Dutch found no inducements whatever on the west; their s.h.i.+ps were wrecked, their crews attacked by the natives, and they had great difficulty in finding fresh water; so that it was little wonder that even their energy and adventurous spirit recognised but nothing in TERRA AUSTRALIS to repay them for the trouble of taking possession. The French, too, saw little in the unclaimed portion of the country they visited to do more than threaten an occupation, which never took place, and it is doubtful if the uninviting sh.o.r.es of Botany Bay would have held out any hope to a body of free immigrants.

In all these halts on the way to colonization, Australia seems to have borne but the aspect of her interior plains: formidable and repellent to the intruder. Starting from the south, the first travellers had to face all the loneliness and sterility of Lake Torrens and the other salt lakes, and it was many years before it was found out that beyond existed good habitable country. Eyre and Sturt both failed in their efforts to penetrate north, and it was astonis.h.i.+ng how easily it was afterwards accomplished by two such comparatively inexperienced men as Burke and Wills. From the west, nature was all against the explorer, and it was only after the discovery of the Ashburton that Forest managed to reach the overland line, that river having helped him well into the centre of the colony. From the north, the penetration of the Great Plain was only attempted once by A. C. Gregory, and then he was repulsed. From the eastern sh.o.r.e, the steady progress, although not destined to finally succeed, gradually brought nearly half the continent under the sway of settlement, and the advance was mainly checked by the disappointment resulting from Kennedy's examination of the Barcoo, and its final course into a dreary desert. Of the many magnificent preparations made, it has not always been the lot of the best equipped parties to attain the greatest success, few men started with less outfit than did Macdowall Stuart, when he reached to and beyond central Mount Stuart; no men ever left better provided than did Burke and Wills, and their unfortunate death by starvation is too well known. The equipment of the explorer, especially as regards the use of camels, has been a matter of much dispute. M'Kinlay speaks highly in praise of them, Warburton and Giles both ascribe their safety to having them with them. But although they have been the means of achieving long stages over dry country, they are treacherous and dangerous animals to deal with. And should they make their escape, it would be impossible to recover them with only horses at command. Then, too, the possession of camels leads to hasty and hurried examination of country, and the mere fact of being in command of such means of locomotion entices a man to push on regardless of caution.

M'Kinlay reports that the camels seem to thrive well on everything, but Warburton appeared to have great difficulty in obtaining feed for them in the sandhill country. Be this as it may, they have done good service in Australia, but it is not evident that they are always of equal good.

But the time will, without doubt, soon come when camels will no longer be required, and the scenes of the forced and painful marches of some of our explorers be watered by the springs now imprisoned hundreds of feet below the surface. Since these pages were commenced, one of the strongest outflows in the world has been struck near the foot of the range in Queensland, some hundreds of miles back from the central coast, in a place which witnessed the last expedition of Major Mitch.e.l.l. This discovery, added to the many that have preceded it, leads to much thought as to the probability of future discoveries, and the wonderful springs that are already known to exist.

"Water! water! everywhere, and not a drop to drink." Although not absolutely true, in fact, or rather on the surface, this quotation might be uttered with a strong measure of truth by many a poor wretch peris.h.i.+ng from thirst on a drought-blasted inland plain, whilst underneath him, at a greater or less distance, run sunless seas.

Of the magnitude of our great subterranean reservoir who shall tell?

What craft will ever float on its dark surface, under domes of pendant stalact.i.tes, rippling for the first time the ice-cold waters, and disturbing the eyeless fish in their shadowy haunts? Only when here and there we tap it, and the mighty pressure sends up a thin column of water hundreds of feet in answer. Or when we notice the strong, constant springs that at intervals break through the surface crust to gladden us; or when the deeper internal fires burst forth, and hurl up its waters in scathing steam and boiling mud, can we guess of the great hidden sea beneath.

We have a problem given into our hands to solve; it is our heritage, and we have only just commenced to try and find the answer. In our fair continent there are thousands upon thousands of square miles of fertile country that Nature herself has planned and mapped out into wide fields, with gentle declivities and slopes, fit for the reception of the modest channel that shall convey the living water over the great pasture lands; and now we want the magician to come, and, with the wand of human skill, bring the interior waters to the surface, and make the desert blossom.

Of the great supply that lies awaiting us deep down in the earth's caverns we have incontestible proofs, and of the force latent in it to lift it to the surface, to be our willing slave and bondsman, we, too, have some dawning notion. Will years of study and observation give us the power to wield the wand at will? We cannot but believe it. Our vast and fertile downs were never destined to be idle and unproductive for months and months, dependent only on the n.i.g.g.ard clouds o'erhead.

To make Australia the richest and most self-supporting country that sun ever shone upon, wherein every man could follow out the old saying of sitting under his own vine and fig tree, what is wanted? The answer to this problem is to bring to our rich alluvial surface the waters under the earth.

On the great inland plateau that occupies two-thirds of the entire continent, we find the soil teeming with elements of surpa.s.sing fertility. Even the grudging rainfall that comes so seldom has developed a wealth of indigenous herbage, gra.s.ses, and fodder plants unequalled in any other part of the globe. The earth seems to have put forth every inherent vitalising power it possesses to render its creatures independent of cruel seasons.

What traveller but has noticed the magical effect of rain upon the deep friable soil, formed by the denuded limestone rock. Almost instantaneously fresh life springs up. Within but a short time the dry and withered stalks of gra.s.s a.s.sume a deep rich green, the soft broad leaves and joints are replete with moisture. The bare ground is quickly coated with trailing vines and creepers, bearing succulent seed pods, grateful and moist. The rough-coated, staggering beast that could scarce drag its feeble legs out of the muddy waterhole, becomes in a few weeks strong and vigorous. What would not such a land be with a constant fertilizing stream of water through, and about it?

In approaching the subject of our subterranean water supply, the peculiar physical formation of Australia must be borne in mind. The great flat tableland that stretches in almost unvarying monotony from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e, fringed round with its strip of coastal land, resembles--to use a homely simile--nothing so much as a narrow brimmed, flat crowned hat. The moisture-laden clouds that visit us, break on the sides of this hat, giving the brim, or coast, the full benefit of their precipitation; drifting over the plateau, or crown, with rapidly decreasing bulk. Thus, the great plain, in size the greatest, and in soil the richest part of us, is always labouring under the curse of irregular and inefficient rainfall; and whatever good we may do in the way of water storage and we may do so much-we have always the threat of many years of drought hanging over, during which our treasury of water will be drained, and not replenished.

Welling from the sides of the tableland we find large permanent springs, in many cases the sources of fine strong-flowing rivers, the component parts of whose waters now first see the light again after countless ages.

Storms and floods may come and go unheeded, their steady flow is-maintained unchecked by summer or winter weather; for their birth is deep down in the earth, where meteorological disturbances are unknown.

Like an old and battered tank, through whose cracked and leaky sides the water it contains is escaping, so these springs find vent through fissures in the mighty tableland, to flow down to the sea.

Up in the northern provinces where, perhaps, if anything, the contrast of these flowing streams beneath the parched surroundings is more striking than in the more temperate southern clime, there are some mighty leaks in the sides of the tableland. The Gregory River, in the Burke district of Queensland has one unvarying flow; a strong running stream, never lessened by the longest drought, but gliding beneath cool ma.s.ses of tropical foliage and gurgling over rocky bars when all around is dry.

What a great heritage here runs to waste unheeded.

In the northern territory, from out another vent, springs the Flora River, whose waters ripple over limestone bars in miniature cascades, from pool to pool, like pigmy reproductions of the lost terraces of New Zealand. Follow the edge of the great tableland around, and amongst the deep seams and fissures of its abrupt descent coastward, we suddenly come, midst rugged barreness and gloomy grandeur, upon these messengers from the inner earth. Some enjoying the sunlight, but for a brief span, disappearing again for ever as, suddenly as they were up-borne; others finding their way down to the habitable lowlands and to the sea. But, unfortunately, all these springs, some of great volume, find issue on the outer edge of the range; the gradual descent that marks the inner slope is not the scene of these outbursts. Here, and throughout the interior, the waters from below rise in a way that seems to best befit the weird solitude of the great plain.

At times, on a bare, baked mound elevated above the surface, there is a dwarf crater filled with water that never overflows, and when tapped and exhausted, rises once more to its former level. Again, canopied by giant ti-trees amid the shrill shrieking of thousands of noisy parrots, the traveller can pick his way along the treacherous paths that wind amongst the hot springs. Or at the foot of a low range a scanty trickle fills a rocky pool, and thence is lost.

In the bed of some far inland creek, the water rises in the sand in shallow pools, during the dark hours of night, to vanish once more beneath the sun. And in low caverns in the limestone hills, down some deep fissure, can be seen the waters of a stream, whose rise and course no man has ever traced. Again a solitary lagoon is found whereon no lily grows, and wherein no fish swims. Where the belated bushman camping for the night, finds the next morning that the water has sunk many feet, or perhaps has risen, when no rain has fallen far or near for months. All these signs and tokens from the great sea beneath us may serve as guides to the end.

When one comes to know the real value of water in a thirsty land, it almost seems like a crime on the part of Nature, that a spring should rise and flow for a comparatively short distance, to be lost in the sea.

When by placing the source some fifteen or twenty miles away the course would run for hundreds of miles through a dry country. Can human ingenuity improve on nature?

In this case nature seems to have laid the ground work of a great comprehensive continental plain; to have put the lever ready for man to start it, and though the scheme is one of such magnitude that it may at first glance seem widely impossible, there is no reason, backed as it would be by natural forces, that it may not be an accomplishment of the future.

To fully understand the great problem of the water supply of Australia, it is necessary to comprehend and carry in mind the wonderfully unique river system of the continent. In an average area of 1,800 miles east and west, by 900 miles north and south, the whole drainage runs from north to south; that is to say, all that finds vent in the ocean. This, of course, is the surface formation carrying off the rainfall, and has no bearing on the outbreak of subterranean springs. But, as showing the upheaval of the land to the northward, it points out that naturally the flow of irrigation on a large scale will be from north to south.

It may be said that from the 18th parallel there is a steady slope southward, broken only by the subordinate natural features of the country, which necessarily form the irregularities of the smaller tributaries. In this great block of more than a million and a quarter of square miles there are then all the defined channels requisite for the carriage of water throughout the heart of the continent, but with the important fact wanting that they are dest.i.tute of a constant and steady supply from the doubtful rainfall. The tilt of the northern edge of the plateau puts their sources above the level of the great springs, and causes them to be dependent on these intermittent and often scanty rains.

And we know that these rains have failed in producing any comprehendable system of drainage over one third of our continent, at, least, at present with our limited knowledge, the water system appears wasteful and purposeless throughout that region.

If then the underground sea that exists beneath could be, tapped as far north as possible, the water would rise to the surface at a much higher level, than would be possible elsewhere, and much greater use could be made of it, inasmuch as a larger area would lay below it for fertilization. Now, the question of the existence of this water supply at a uniform depth beneath the earth's surface can be proved by noting the existence of the springs that we know of, that have found their way without artificial aid to the light of day. Only those can be brought in evidence that are unmistakeably outside of local influence, and are unaffected by wet weather, or dry.

In the north, on the edge of the tableland, they are most numerous. On the east coast, at the head of the Burdekin River, there are unmistakeable signs of an upward effort of the imprisoned waters to free themselves. One main tributary, a creek called Fletcher's Creek, takes its rise in a labyrinth of basaltic rocks, that for years defied the efforts of the whites to penetrate. This stream rising from its cradle in the dead lava, winds in and out of the encompa.s.sing stretches of rocks, until it emerges on the outer country, where it feeds and maintains two large lakes, ere it is lost in the sandy bed of one of the anabranches of the Burdekin. It is one of the strongest and most consistent outbreaks in the north, and its volume and continuance show the strength of the source from which it emerges.

The head of the Burdekin itself is amongst lava beds, wherein there are many similar springs; most of these take the form of permanent lagoons.

To the westward we find ourselves on a more arid surface, the formation of the ranges not being so favourable to the development of springs; and where they do occur, they are evidently the product of rainfall. On the watershed we are on a corner, as it were, of the inland plain, and our ascent has put us above the spring level. Lower down, if we follow the well-known Flinders River, we find in the hot springs at Mount Brown another upshoot from below that has evidently come from the neighbourhood of the internal fires themselves. From this point right away west, skirting the edge of the tableland, great rushes of water are comparatively common. Some find their way between basaltic columns, and after feeding the flow of some large river for many miles, die suddenly, leaving the lower part of the watercourse a barren, sandy channel. The heads of the Leichhardt and Gregory Rivers are particularly prolific in springs; the latter river, as I have already noticed, being one of the steadiest flowing rivers in Australia. Westward still, the heads of all the rivers, no matter what their lower course is like, abound in springs at the break of the descent from the tableland, and, as nearly as can be computed, all these occur at nearly about an identical alt.i.tude.

To travel west, through to the western sh.o.r.e of Australia, only gives us the same phenomena: everywhere the belt of springs is to be found about half-way between the edge of the tableland and the coast level, just where the abrupt descent terminates and a gentler slope is entered on. It would be wearisome to enumerate them all, the fact of their existence is so well-known in these days.

To fairly see what would be the result of bringing a little of the great sea of hidden waters to the surface, let us take an instance of one of the tributaries of that great artery of Australia, the Darling. The head waters of the Warrego rise in lat.i.tude 24 deg., and at its very head, within almost a stone's throw, are large springs, that find their way down the range into the lowest river. Thence, through coastal lands, to the eastern sea board. Now had these springs broken out on the higher level of the Warrego watershed, their waters would have benefited hundreds of miles of some of the fairest country in Australia, that now suffers under constant drought.

The preserving and regulating of their waters, after guiding them into the channels prepared by Nature, would be an after-work greatly a.s.sisted by the varied formation of the country through which their courses would run.

PART II.

MARITIME DISCOVERIES.