CHARACTER OF THE RIVERS. 
87 
expectations. I could not doubt its being the great channel 
of the streams from the S.E. angle of the island. Mr. Hume 
had mentioned to me that he crossed three very considerable 
streams, when employed with Mr. Hovell in 1823 in pene- 
trating towards Port Phillips, to which the names of the 
Goulburn, the Hume, and the Ovens, had been given ; and 
as I was 300 miles from the track these gentlemen had pur- 
sued, I considered it more than probable that those rivers 
must already have formed ajunction above me, more especially 
when I reflected that the convexity of the mountains to the 
S.E. would necessarily direct the waters falling inwards 
from them to a common centre. 
We entered the new river at right angles, and, as I have 
remarked, at the point of junction the channel of the 
Morumbidgee had narrowed so as to bear all the appear- 
ance of an ordinary creek. In breadth it did not exceed 
fifty feet, and if, instead of having passed down it, I had 
been making my way up the principal streams, I should 
little have dreamt that so dark and gloomy an outlet con- 
cealed a river that would lead me to the haunts of civilized 
man, and whose fountains rose amidst snow-clad mountains. 
Such, however, is the characteristic of the streams falling 
to the westward of the coast ranges. Descending into a 
low and level interior, and depending on their immediate 
springs for existence, they fall off, as they increase their 
distance from the base of the mountains in which they rise, 
and in their lower branches give little results of the promise 
they had previously made. 
