HISTORY OF FLOODS IN THE RIVER DARLING. 207 
judging from the timber, to be a wide expanse of shallow water, 
suddenly it deepened, and my horse after swimming for a few 
rit 9S away. I was determined to get through as my destina- 
tion was only some 5 miles further on. swam on until [ 
found shallow water again, and walked the remainder of the 
journey minus boots, which impeded my swimming to such an 
extent that I had to take advantage of a convenient tree to pull 
them off and leave them there. Soon aebaasin I went back to 
the camp and brought it into the Darling, where we stayed some 
six weeks or two months surveying and exploring some 80 miles 
There was little or no perceptible fali in the river water to the 
time we left about the end of September, 1864. I wanted to see 
a marked tree on its bank near Ciover Creek, below Gunderbooka, 
but could not get within a mile of it. At about this time the 
tribe of aboriginals usually occupying the back country, which 
scarcity of water in their usual haunts. This I found was their 
usual custom in the summer months and exceptionally dry seasons. 
There was some sort of agreement or understanding between them 
and the river tribe, as to certain localities on the river frontage, 
which they could inhabit on these occasions without molestation. 
I think the provisions were very vague and depended on the 
Up to this time I had not been out on the Warrego or Paroo. 
That the Darling waters were 70 miles wide may have been a fact 
in a sense ; that is, the country is intersected by ana branches, 
lakes, and ‘swamps, all filled with the flood waters, but it was not 
a continuous sheet of water for anything like that distance. The 
mails which were carried on horseback at that time are reported 
to have been conveyed from Oxley’s Tableland, some 25 miles 
from Bourke, into the town by boats. Probably this report should 
ris sp nhipt aa grano.” There were large sheets of flood water 
the Bogan, as much as 50 or 60 miles auive its confluence, 
for T recollect that one of my horses broke away there, and whilst 
riding after him in 12 or 18 inches of water he kept me dodging 
about, and I felt my watch jerked out of my pocket, and saw it 
fall in the muddy water, but before I could pull up I lost the 
exact spot and was unable to recover the watch. 
Very little, if any, rain fell from the end of April, when I left 
the Lachlan, until the middle of October when I returned there. 
In the summer of 1866 I was surveying in the pastoral district 
of Bligh, which was then in such a state for want of feed and 
water that it was almost impossible to move about at all. For 
