that, in the Macquarie, he had now discovered the highway into the interior, Oxley writes:—
"Nothing can afford a stronger contrast than the two rivers, Lachlan and Macquarie; different in their habit, their appearance, and the sources from which they derive their waters, but, above all, differing in the country bordering on them; the one constantly receiving great accession of water from four streams, and as liberally rendering fertile a great extent of country, whilst the other, from its source to its termination, is constantly diffusing and diminishing the waters it originally receives over low and barren deserts, creating only wet flats and uninhabitable morasses, and during its protracted and sinuous course, is never indebted to a single tributary stream."
Oxley having successfully carried through the Lachlan expedition, was at once selected to command a similar one down the Macquarie, on which, now that the former river had so disappointed expectations, men's hopes were fixed. Oxley seems to have been particularly unhappy in his deductions, every guess hazarded by him as to the future utility of the country he passed over, or the probable nature of the farther interior, was incorrect; and now the Macquarie was to refuse to bear his boat's keel to the westward; after the same manner as the Lachlan.
In those days men had not yet mastered the idea that the physical formation of Australia was not to be worked out on the same lines as that of other countries; they looked vainly for a river with a wide and noble opening, and none being found on the surveyed coast, conjecture placed it far away in a few leagues of unexplored shore line on the north-west. The constancy with which the southern coast had been examined, precluded all idea from men's minds that the entrance to this long sought river was there. No, it must be yet undiscovered to the westward. Wentworth says:—
"If the sanguine hopes to which the discovery of this river (the Macquarie) has given birth, should be realised, and it should be found to empty itself into the ocean on the north-west coast, which is the only part of this vast island that has not been accurately surveyed, in what mighty conceptions of the future greatness and power of this colony, may we not reasonably indulge? The nearest distance from the point at which Mr. Oxley left off, to any part of the western coast, is very little short of two thousand miles. If this river, therefore, be already of the size of the Hawkesbury at Windsor, which is not less than two hundred and fifty yards in breadth, and of sufficient depth to float a seventy-four gun ship, it is not difficult to imagine what must be its magnitude at its confluence with the ocean: before it can arrive at which it has to traverse a country nearly two thousand miles in extent. If it possess the usual sinuosities of rivers, its course to the sea cannot be less than from five to six thousand miles, and the endless accession of tributary streams which it must receive in its passage through so great an extent of country will without doubt enable it to vie in point of magnitude with any river in the world."
It may, therefore, well be imagined that it was in a most sanguine spirit that Oxley undertook his second journey.
As before, a party had been sent ahead to build boats, and get everything in readiness, and, on the 6th June, 1818, he started on his second expedition into the interior. He had with him, as next in command, the indefatigable Evans, Dr. Harris, who volunteered, Charles Frazer, botanist, and twelve men, eighteen horses, two boats, and provisions for twenty-four weeks.
On the 23rd of the month, having reached a distance of nearly 125 miles from the depôt in Wellington Valley, without the travellers experiencing more obstruction than might have been expected, two men, Thomas Thatcher and John Hall, were sent back to Bathurst with a report to Governor Macquarie, as had been previously arranged.
No sooner had the two parties separated, one with high hopes of their future success, the others bearing back tidings of these confident hopes, than doubt and distrust entered the mind of the leader. In his journal, written not twenty-four hours after the departure of his messengers, he says:—
"For four or five miles there was no material change in the general appearance of the country from what it had been on the preceding days, but for the fast six miles the land was very considerably lower, interspersed with plains clear of timber, and dry. On the banks it was still lower, and in many parts it was evident that the river floods swept over them, though this did not appear to be universally the case. … These unfavourable appearances threw a damp upon our hopes, and we feared that our anticipations had been too sanguine."
In his after report to the Governor, forwarded by Mr. Evans to Newcastle, he writes:—
"My letter, dated the 22nd June last, will have made your Excellency acquainted with the sanguine hopes I entertained from the appearance of the river, that its termination would be either in interior waters or coastwise. When I wrote that letter to your Excellency, I certainly did not anticipate the possibility that a very few days farther travelling would lead us to its termination as an accessible river."
So short-lived were the hopes he had entertained.
On the 30th June, after, for many days, finding the country becoming flatter and more liable to floods, Oxley found himself almost hemmed in by water, and had to return with the whole party to a safer encampment, where a consultation was held. It was decided to send the horses and baggage back to Mount Harris, a small elevation some fifteen miles higher up the river, whilst Oxley himself, with four volunteers and the large boat, proceeded down the river, taking with them a month's provisions. During his absence, Mr. Evans was to proceed to the north-east some sixty miles, and return upon a more northerly course, this being the direction the party intended taking if the river failed them.
Let us see how Oxley fared.
"July 2. I proceeded down the river, during one of the wettest and most stormy days we had yet experienced. About twenty miles from where I set out, there was, properly speaking, no country; the river overflowing its banks, and dividing into streams, which I found had no permanent separation from the main branch, but united themselves to it on a multitude of points. We went seven or eight miles farther, when we stopped for the night, upon a space of ground scarcely large enough to enable us to kindle a fire. The principal stream ran with great rapidity and its banks and neighbourhood as far as we could see, were covered with wood, inclosing us within a margin or bank, vast spaces of country clear of timber were under water, and covered with the common reed, which grew to the height of six or seven feet above the surface. The course and distance by the river was estimated to be from twenty-seven to thirty miles, on a north-west line.
"July 3rd. Towards the morning the storm abated, and at daylight we proceeded on our voyage. The main bed of the river was much contracted, but very deep, the waters spreading to a depth of a foot or eighteen inches over the banks, but all running on the same point of bearing. We met with considerable interruption from fallen timber, which in places nearly choked up the channel. After going about twenty miles we lost the land and trees: the channel of the river, which lay through reeds, and was from one to three feet deep, ran northerly. This continued for three or four miles further, when although there had been no previous change in the breadth, depth, and rapidity of the stream for several miles, and I was sanguine in my expectations of soon entering the long sought for Australian sea, it all at once eluded our further search by spreading on every point from northwest to northeast, amongst the ocean of reeds that surrounded us still running with the same rapidity as before. There was no channel whatever amongst these reeds, and the depth varied from five to three feet. This astonishing change (for I cannot call it a termination of the river), of course, left me no alternative but to endeavour to return to some spot on which we could effect a landing before dark. I estimated that on this day we had gone about twenty-four miles, on nearly the same point of bearing as yesterday. To assert positively that we were on the margin of the lake or sea into which this great body of water is discharged might reasonably be deemed a conclusion which has nothing but conjecture for its basis; but if an opinion may be permitted to be hazarded from actual appearances, mine is decidedly in favour of our being in the vicinity of an inland sea or lake, most probably
