AUSTRALIAN ALPS EXPEDITION.
To the Editor of the Sydney Gazette.
SIR,
I beg to inform you, for the information
of our respected community, that the expedition, undertaken at my own private and
very circumscribed means, has surpassed
by its results, my most sanguine expectations. After passing and investigating Goulburn, Bridalbane, Gonderoo, and Limestone Plains, I passed the limits of the Colony at
the Eastern side of the Tindery Mountain.
Visiting many of the stations, scattered
about the interesting and important down
of Menero, I crossed the Snowy River, and
brought my cart so far as Mutong, situated
about the 37 ° S. L. and 148 E. L. As it
was impossible to go farther—nobis ubi de fuit orbis—I converted my cart horse into a
pack horse, and en ered by Westall's Opening the very heart of the Australian Alps.
The 4th of March, at 3 a.m., my thermometer ranged only 25° , and my water-pots were covered with ice an inch thick. The 6th of March, at 8 a.m., I was on the top
of Mount William, the absolute altitude of
which is, according to the preliminary calculations I was able to make at the time, from 5 to 7,000 feet, and therefore by far the highest point ever reached by any traveller
on the Australian Continent. This alpine
country exhibited to me very interesting observations; the vegetation, for instance,
possessing many representants of the European Flora under similar localises. The
genera of Gentiana, Arnica, Vaccinium, &c, were represented by analogous plant, which however are all undescribed. From this elevated position I discovered towards SSW. a very extensive plain, called by the natives Omeo. According to the information I got of the only man of the Menero
tribe, who had been once at this plain, it
contains a lake, bigger than Lake George.
It was therefore now my taOc to reach this
interesting and important place. After my
return from the mountains, I hired four
men on horseback, and entered a second
time the vast scenery of the Australian
Alps. I ascended Mount Duram Birmungi,
where, at almost the half of this journey,
I was obliged to lead my horse and to
go on foot. So I arrived for the fourth
time at the banks of the Snowy River,
where its breadth is about 200 yards. There
I found a pass, formed by two high mountains, and was only one and a half day's
journey distant from Stanley's Plains.
But the shortness of my provisions, and the
behaviour of the four naen (who were unluckily not my own), obliged me to go
back. However, the discovery of Pass
Britannia will, before long, become of a
great importance to the Colony, this being
the place where a road, connecting Twofold
Bay with the Murrumbidgee and the other
SW. parts of the Colony may be executed.
The Snowy River must, according to its
size at the place I saw it, become very soon
navigable. The farthest point I made was
60 miles North from Bass's Straits.—Sistitnus tandem.—I am now on my return to Sydney. My cart is entirely loaded with
natural history objects, amongst which are
several bottles of a mineral spring of an
acidulous, alcaline nature, from Richard
Bourke's Spring, on Menero.
Yours, regardfully,
DR. J. LHOTSKY,
Jirabombra, on Limestone Plains, 5th April, 1834.
