Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia — Complete eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 515 pages of information about Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia — Complete.

Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia — Complete eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 515 pages of information about Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia — Complete.

Immediately below the point on which they stood, Mr. Kent says, a low undulating country extended to the northward, as far as he could see.  It was partly open, and partly wooded; and was every where covered with verdure.  It continued round to the eastward, and apparently ran down southerly, at the opposite base of the mount Barker Range.  I think there can be but little doubt that my view from the S.E., that is, from the lake, extended over the same or a part of the same country.  Captain Barker again slept on the summit of the range, near a large basin that looked like the mouth of a crater, in which huge fragments of rocks made a scene of the utmost confusion.  These rocks were a coarse grey granite, of which the higher parts and northern termination of the Mount Lofty range are evidently formed; for Mr. Kent remarks that it superseded the schistose formation at the ravine we have noticed—­and that, subsequently, the sides of the hills became more broken, and valleys, or gullies, more properly speaking, very numerous.  Captain Barker estimated the height of Mount Lofty above the sea at 2,400 feet, and the distance of its summit from the coast at eleven miles.  Mr. Kent says they were surprised at the size of the trees on the immediate brow of it; they measured one and found it to be 43 feet in girth.  Indeed, he adds, vegetation did not appear to have suffered either from its elevated position, or from any prevailing wind.  Eucalypti were the general timber on the ranges; one species of which, resembling strongly the black butted-gum, was remarkable for a scent peculiar to its bark.

Australian salmon.

The party rejoined the soldiers on the 21st, and enjoyed the supply of fish which they had provided for them.  The soldiers had amused themselves by fishing during Captain Barker’s absence, and had been abundantly successful.  Among others they had taken a kind of salmon, which, though inferior in size, resembled in shape, in taste, and in the colour of its flesh, the salmon of Europe.  I fancied that a fish which I observed with extremely glittering scales, in the mouth of a seal, when myself on the coast, must have been of this kind; and I have no doubt that the lake is periodically visited by salmon, and that these fish retain their habits of entering fresh water at particular seasons, also in the southern hemisphere.

Immediately behind Cape Jervis, there is a small bay, in which according to the information of the sealers who frequent Kangaroo Island, there is good and safe anchorage for seven months in the year, that is to say, during the prevalence of the E. and N.E. winds.

Survey of the coast.

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Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia — Complete from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.