Page:A sketch of the physical structure of Australia.djvu/96

84 from a wind blowing from the interior of the country or the S.E., while at Port Essington every wind that does not blow over the neighbouring sea is hot and overpowering. These hot winds, especially those felt in the south-eastern part of Australia, can have no other origin, than a current of air blowing over some great expanse of burning desert. Captain Sturt in his last expedition, seems to have penetrated into the very "nest and hot-bed" of these hot winds. In addition to his published accounts of this burning sea of sand ridges and ironstone flats to which he penetrated, I recollect his telling me when I met him in South Australia in 1845, on his return from his arduous journey, that the sands were so hot that if a lucifer match were let fall on them it instantly took fire, and that the blasts of wind were sometimes of such an intensity of temperature that they could not face them, but were obliged to stoop the head till they passed by. The existence of these hot winds is incompatible with the idea of any expanse of water or of any mountain chain of importance in the interior of Australia, while it exactly agrees with our conclusions drawn from geological evidence, of that interior being for the most part a low and arid plain.

The total absence of large rivers is another important fact in accordance with this supposition. The northern half of Australia is within the influence of the trade wind that blows throughout the year from the E.S.E. In the winter of that hemisphere