Rumour, always busy with tales of the unknown interior, now spread a
story of a mysterious river called the Kindur, running to the north-west.
A runaway convict named Clarke, alias "the barber," brought the story up
first. He said that he had long heard of the river from the natives, and
at last determined to make his escape and follow it down to see if it
would lead him to any other country. He, therefore, took to the bush, and
started on this adventurous trip. The imaginative and highly-coloured
fabrication that he related on his return, was probably invented in order
to save his back, but at any rate it was plausible enough to induce the
Government to dispatch an expedition to investigate the matter. This was
his story. He started from Liverpool Plains, and followed a river called
by the natives the GNAMOI or NAMMOY, into which he said that Oxley's
river Peel flowed. Crossing this he struck another river, the KINDUR, and
down this stream he travelled no less than four hundred miles before it
was joined by the GNAMOI. Nothing daunted he stuck to the KINDUR, which
was broad and navigable, flowing through level country and spreading into
occasional lakes, until at last he reached the sea, but he acknowledged
that he had lost his reckoning, and whether it was five hundred or five
thousand miles he went he could not truthfully say, but he was as quite
sure upon one point, that he had never travelled south of west.
Pages:
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202