They
now turned their steps homeward, and arrived at Bathurst on the evening
of the 29th of August.
Convinced that, in the Macquarie, he had now discovered the highway into
the interior, Oxley writes:--
"Nothing can afford a stronger contrast than the two rivers, Lachlan and
Macquarie; different in their habit, their appearance, and the sources
from which they derive their waters, but, above all, differing in the
country bordering on them; the one constantly receiving great accession
of water from four streams, and as liberally rendering fertile a great
extent of country, whilst the other, from its source to its termination,
is constantly diffusing and diminishing the waters it originally receives
over low and barren deserts, creating only wet flats and uninhabitable
morasses, and during its protracted and sinuous course, is never indebted
to a single tributary stream."
Oxley having successfully carried through the Lachlan expedition, was at
once selected to command a similar one down the Macquarie, on which, now
that the former river had so disappointed expectations, men's hopes were
fixed.
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