Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/487
rising waters endangered the lives of the party. Oxley
turned aside, steering for the south-west, in hope of reaching Cape Northumberland. He had run risk from flood.
He was to endure thirst. The country between the Lachlan
and the Murrumbidgee was parched; water was scarce;
and some of the horses perished. He was but a few
miles from the Murrumbidgee, and had he then persevered
he would have reached it with far less difficulty than he
encountered in turning back to the Lachlan. But he
had to save the lives of his party, and could not
surmise that within a few miles of him on the south,
ran a larger river than the deceptive Lachlan whose
marshes had defied him on the north. He turned back, and
regaining the Lachlan, followed its course downwards, until
the spreading of its waters made him resolve to close his
explorations altogether. He denounced the country as
"useless for the purposes of civilized men;" inferred, and
not unjustly, that the Lachlan itself, unfed by affluents,
must either be dry or become "a chain of ponds" in
summer, and recorded his opinion that the low sandy hills
on the south-western coast line were the "only barriers
which prevent the ocean from extending over a country which was probably once under its dominion." His last
effort was to take three men for a final attempt to solve the
mystery of the Lachlan waters. Returning from a point
in latitude 33.57.30, longitude 144.31.15, he diverged from
the Lachlan to the north-east, and after cutting his way
successfully through a belt of mallee scrub (eucalyptus dumosa) struck upon the Macquarie river, near a place he
called Wellington Valley, and returned to Bathurst through
a country which he described as beautiful and fertile. His
narrative, though discouraging as to the Lachlan, was
tempting as regarded the Macquarie. He was sent again
in May 1818 to explore that river. Like the Lachlan it
deceived him. He concluded that both rivers ran into "an
inland sea or lake, gradually filling up by immense depositions from the higher lands left by the waters which flow
into it. It is most singular that the high lands on this
continent seem to be confined to the sea-coast, or not to
extend to any great distance from it."
Unable to follow where the river could not preserve a