Explore "Red O'Shaughnessy" by J.H.M. Abbott on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
WITH only the briefest halt at noon, the little cavalcade rode up the valley throughout the day, and when the early dusk closed down over the gradually narrowing levels they had come out into more or less open country again. Seven years later explorers from the Hawkesbury--Howes and Loders and others--came down from the ranges to the south, and, because the date was the 17th of March, named the rich district they had discovered 'Patrick's Plains.' The people who came after them made a town in the middle of the valley, which became known as Singleton. This had been the limit of Colonel Paterson's boat voyage in 1801.
They camped on a bend in the river that night, and after supper O'Shaughnessy called the Green Hills blackfellow aside, and asked him some questions. He was the same native who had accompanied them when they had chased the runaway convicts, Saxton and Barrow, and he was on good terms with the red giant, whom he seemed to regard as a superhuman being of some sort.