On the 11th
of July, after following the course of the river for three hundred miles,
and ascertaining beyond all doubt that it must be identical with the
junction in the Murray, noticed by Captain Sturt, Mitchell determined to
return; the unvarying sameness of the country they had travelled over
holding forth no hope of any important discovery being made, in the space
intervening between their lowest camp and Sturt's junction. The natives,
too, had been an incessant cause of annoyance to them; robbing the camp
at every opportunity, and keeping the leader in constant anxiety for the
safety of any of the members of his party, whom duty compelled to leave
the main body. On the very day, almost at the very hour, when Mitchell
made up his mind to return, the first hostile collision between the two
races occurred; a collision which had only been hitherto averted by the
admirable patience of the Major and his men. On the 29th June, he
wrote:--
"I never saw such unfavourable specimens of the aborigines as these
children of the smoke, [Referring to their constant habit of burning the
grass.] they were so barbarously and implacably hostile, and shamelessly
dishonest, and so little influenced by reason that the more they saw of
our superior weapons and means of defence, the more they showed their
hatred and tokens of defiance.
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