and guide the men on to the locality.  Governor Macquarie also seems to have had his attention drawn to the same conspicuous quality, for he sent young Hume out with Meehan, a surveyor, and Throsby to examine the country about the Shoalhaven River.  On the way, however, Throsby disagreed with Meehan about the course they should adopt, and, taking a black boy with him, left his companions and made the best of his way to Port Jervis.  Meehan and Hume carried out the work as originally decided on, and then forced their way up the range, which had now seemingly been deprived of a great many of its original terrors by the hardy pioneers of the coast.  On the highlands they discovered and named Lake George, a freshwater lake, and a smaller one which they called Lake Bathurst, both, strange to say, seemingly isolated.

Here we may remark on the tenacity with which the Murrumbidgee River long eluded the eye of the white man.  It is scarcely probable that Meehan and Hume, who on this occasion were within comparatively easy reach of the head waters, could have seen a new inland river at that time without mentioning the fact, but there is no record traceable anywhere as to the date of its discovery, or the name of its finder.  When in 1823 Captain Currie and Major Ovens were led along its bank on to the beautiful Maneroo country by Joseph Wild, the stream was then familiar to the early settlers and called the Morumbidgee.  Even in 1821, when Hume found the Yass Plains, almost on its bank, he makes no special mention of the river.  From all this we may deduce the extremely probable fact that the position of the river was shown to some stockrider by a native, who also confided the aboriginal name, and so it gradually worked the knowledge of its identity into general belief.  This theory is the more feasible as the river has retained its native name.  If a white man of any known position had made the discovery, it would at once have received the name of some person holding official sway.  But this is altogether a purely geographical digression.

It was while on this expedition that Hume found the Goulburn Plains.  On another occasion he went with Alexander Berry, a noted south-coast pioneer, up the Shoalhaven River, and accompanied the party when they landed and conducted different excursions.  By the time he reached manhood, Hume was justly classed amongst the finest bushmen in the colony.  In his after career when he led the famous expedition to the south coast, and again, when as Sturt’s right hand he accompanied that explorer on the notable expedition that solved the mystery of the outflow of the inland rivers and gave to settled Australia the mighty Darling, he fully proved his right to the title.

4.2.  Discovery of the Hume or Murray.