labour,[1] and three South Sea Islanders, without licence, and her men were suffering dreadfully from scurvy.
"I sent this vessel," says Moresby, "to Brisbane, in charge of Lieutenant S. G. Smith, where she was eventually released for want of sufficient evidence."
"On the 14th," continues Moresby, "we boarded the barque 'Crishna,' of Sydney, and found that she had thirty-five South Sea Islanders on board, whose history was so similar to that of the 'Melanie' natives that I need not relate it. We sent her to Brisbane, where she was condemned and sold for 3,900, with her cargo, intelligence of which was very cheering to the ship's company. This amount has since been heavily cut, down by law expenses, and the Imperial Government has claimed half the remainder."
The owners of the "Crishna" do not appear to have followed the course pursued by the owners of the "Melanie" in appealing to the Privy Council.
"Wishing to clear up doubt," says Moresby, "as to the existence or non-existence of a RIVER REPORTED AT THE BOTTOM OF LLOYD'S BAY, we stood in and anchored near Low Island on the evening of the 15th [January, 1873]. [SEE MAP C.J The chart at this point is marked ' apparent opening of a large river ' ; and it will be seen, by a glance at the map of North Queensland, that a river would be a rich gift of Nature here, as affording an opening into the country and a highway for the transit of agricultural produce. Navigating Lieutenant Connor and I, in the galley, and Mr. Mourilyan, in the gig, came to an anchor accordingly, off the supposed entrance of the river, at 11 p.m. . . . At daybreak we began our search for the river, and explored one salt-water creek after another ; but each was a failure, and led only to entanglement in the swamp, where clouds of mosquitoes resented our invasion of their holds. THERE WAS NO RIVER. The drainage of a hill range, 6 or 7 miles inland, had created a swamp of many miles extent, covered with mangroves and intersected by these salt-water creeks; and that was all."
But that was not all. The boats had simply got lost, as they very well might, in the network of channels formed by the outlet of a large river. Greater persistence, or a stroke of luck, would have revealed a channel leading up to deep fresh-water reaches. Seven years later, the writer stood on an eminence from which he sketched the windings of a river in the bottom of a valley which fell to the north, parallel to the coast-line, from near its head to its mouth in Lloyd Bay. The right, or eastern, wall of the valley was formed by a sierra to which he gave the name of MACROSSAN RANGE.[2] The left was formed by a portion of the "Great Dividing Range," which parts the waters of the Pacific and the Gulf of Carpentaria, and which, for the reason that in this locality it is a distinct geographical entity, he called the MCILWRAITH RANGE.[3] The river itself he named the LOCKHART.[4] Shortly afterwards,
- ↑ The presumption is that the shell had been gathered before the Act came into force : at all events, no evidence to the contrary is adduced. Moresby, in his zeal, not only anticipated the attitude of the labour unions of recent days in treating as "black" any commodity which had been handled by non-union workmen, but even made his condemnation retrospective.
- ↑ After the Hon. John Macrossan, Minister for Mines.
- ↑ After Sir Thomas McIlwraith, Premier of Queensland.
- ↑ After Hugh Lockhart, S.S.C., Edinburgh, a friend of his boyhood.
