CHAPTER II.

THE BUSH IN THE INTERIOR.

It needs only a single glance at the map of New Holland to see that,
like most other countries, and even more than most others, the coasts
are well known, while the interior parts are comparatively undiscovered,
and, to a great extent, totally so. And, although a much more minute
description of the shores of this immense island might easily be given,
although we might accompany Flinders or King in their navigation of its
intricate seas, and survey of its long line of coast, yet this part of
the subject must necessarily be passed over without detaining us any
further. A very considerable portion of the sea-coast of New Holland is
not much unlike that in the Gulph of Carpentaria, in the north part of
the island, where, when Captain Flinders had reached the highest spot he
could find in 175 leagues of coast,--this loftiest hill did not much
exceed the height of the ship's masthead! And where the shores are not
of this exceedingly level character, they are usually sterile, sandy,
and broken, so as to offer rather an uninviting aspect to the stranger.
It is obvious that, in either case, whether the coast be flat or barren,
there may be many beautiful and lovely districts within a day's journey
inland; and nothing is more absurd than to take exception against the
whole of a country merely because its borders and boundaries are
forbidding. In the case of New Holland, it is true, the same sort of
barrenness extends itself very much into the interior of the land; but,
if we pursue the patient footsteps and daring discoveries of those few
Europeans who have penetrated far into its inland parts, we shall find
many interesting scenes described, and much both of the sublime and
beautiful in nature brought before us.

One of the principal scenes on which have been displayed the
perseverance and courage of the explorers of the interior is the banks
of the river Darling. This stream, which has its source on the western
side of the long range of mountains running parallel with the coast, and
called in the colony the Blue Mountains, carries off the drainage of an
immense extent of country, to the westward and north-westward of New
South Wales. In fact, except in the southern parts of that colony, where
the Lachlan and Murrumbidgee carry off the waters which do not fall
eastwards to the coast, all the streams that rise upon or beyond the
Blue Mountains, and take a westerly direction, finally me