IIISTORY OF FLOODS IN THE RIVER DARLING. 165 
August, 1844, and December, 1845 ; M. gpd in Pons oee Novem- 
water-holes, or little better, saving one fresh, noted : Sturt. Nor 
is it surprising that settlers were slow in taking up country which 
1 
had been seen at its worst. In , however, a station w 
taken up 20 miles below Brewarrina,—again, you see, in one of the 
worst droughts ever known, and by a strange fatality, the next 
attempt was at the Wentworth end, in the great drought 1849-50, 
It is not to be wondered at, vic that from both the report comes 
that the river was dried up to a chain of water-holes. Mr. Dicken- 
son tells us that the river ran during 1852, 1853, 1854, and ‘1855, 
until he left. There is, however, a little contradiction about this 
period, but I think his statement is correct. 1860 was a very wet 
year all over the Colony, and as far north as Brisbane, and the few 
records we have for New England in that year show heavy rains. 
So that I have no doubt there were floods in the Darling then, 
and also in 1861 for similar reasons. At Armidale that year the 
rainfall was 25 per cent. in excess of the average ; in 1862 the 
rainfall was very small, and in 1863 the rainfall at Armidale was 
the greatest on record there, so that there can be no doubt ahout 
the state of the river then. In 1864, however, the rainfall at 
Armidale was not so ere ; so that the great flood of — year 
must have been due, in great measure, to Ques nsland rain: 
A small work, called § ‘Ten Years in the pasncieg,” sae “Tn 
the areal of 1864 the Darling rose sometimes 3 feet in 24 
stood high above the Darling, where, the blacks said, no flood had 
ever reached, but we had to leave it and go to a sand-bank, where 
we were prisoners for seven weeks, before we could return to our 
hous 
ne 1864 flood Mr. John Kelley kept the house in Bourke known 
as “Tattersall’s,” and had to make an embankment round it 3 
feet high to keep out the water, and in the end was obliged to 
repair the leaks in the embankment with bags of flour, there being 
no more earth dry enough for the purpose. 
J, G, M‘Intosh’s Recollections of the Darling River. 
“My experience goes back to 1861, when I first came to Went- 
worth. The river was pretty low then, but there had spe been a 
flood. In 1862 the river commenced to get very low, an can 
