r and principal range, which still
lay to the north. We traversed, this day, six miles of the valley, and
encamped beside a remarkable rock, near to which the track turned
northward. I rode a little beyond our bivouac, and chanced to fall in
with a tribe of natives from Pewen Bewen on Dart Brook, one of whom
afterwards visited our camp, but he could tell us little about the
interior country. The whole of the valley appears to consist of good
land, and the adjacent mountains afford excellent sheep pasture. In the
evening, a native of Liverpool plains came to our tents; I gave him a
tobacco-pipe, and he promised to show me the best road across them.
Thermometer at sunset 84 degrees.

CROSS LIVERPOOL RANGE.

December 5.

This morning we ascended Liverpool range, which divides the colony from
the unexplored country. Having heard much of this difficult pass, we
proceeded cautiously, by attaching thirteen bullocks to each cart, and
ascending with one at a time. The pass is a low neck, named by the
natives Hecknaduey, but we left the beaten track (which was so very steep
that it was usual to unload carts in order to pass) and took a new route,
which afforded an easier ascent. All had got up safely, and were
proceeding along a level portion, on the opposite side of the range, when
the axle of one of the carts broke, and it became necessary to leave it,
and place the load on the spare packhorses, and such of the bullocks,
taken out of the shafts, as had been broken in to carry packsaddles.

A SICK TRIBE.

We reached at length, a watercourse called Currungai, and encamped upon
its bank, beside the natives from Dart Brook, who had crossed the range
before us, apparently to join some of their tribe, who lay at this place
extremely ill, being affected with a virulent kind of smallpox. We found
the helpless creatures, stretched on their backs, beside the water, under
the shade of the wattle or mimosa trees, to avoid the intense heat of the
sun. We gave them from our stock some medicine; and the wretched
sufferers seemed to place the utmost confidence in its efficacy. I had
often indeed occasion to observe, that however obtuse in some things, the
aborigines seemed to entertain a sort of superstitious belief, in the
virtues of all kinds of physic. I found that this distressed tribe were
also strangers in the land, to which they had resorted. Their meekness,
as aliens, and their utter ignorance of the country they were in, were
ve