Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 55.djvu/143

 over two thousand miles of water communication were given to the world.

For some months in 1830 Sturt was employed in Norfolk Island on trying services, for which he received the thanks of the New South Wales government. The effect of continued strain on his health and eyesight then obliged him to seek advice in England, and ultimately, on 19 July 1833, to quit the army. During this forced inactivity, and while still too blind to read, he published in 1833 the ‘Journals’ of his first two expeditions in 1828 and 1831, ‘with observations on the colony of New South Wales’ (2 vols.).

In 1834 he married Charlotte Christiana, daughter of Colonel William Sheppey Greene, military auditor-general, Calcutta, and, returning to Australia, settled in New South Wales. In May 1838, in charge of the third ‘overland’ party with cattle for South Australia, and eager at the same time to further geographical research, he traced the Hume from where Hume had left it, till, after joining the Goulburn, the Ovens, and the Murrumbidgee, it becomes the Murray. He explored much country along the latter river, till at Moorundi he struck westward and crossed the Mount Lofty ranges to Adelaide, noting specially the fine mineral promise of the mountains. This expedition was followed in September by daring attempts to enter the Murray mouth in a whaleboat. His report on the dangers of that estuary, by dispelling visions of a new capital at Encounter Bay, raised the price of land round Adelaide twenty-five to thirty per cent.

In 1839 he brought his family to Adelaide, where he entered on an active official career. On 3 April of that year, after the resignation of Colonel William Light [q. v.], the first surveyor-general of South Australia, Sturt had accepted that post at the request of the governor, Colonel George Gawler [q. v.], who was not aware that meantime the home government had appointed Captain Frome, R.E., to the same office. On the arrival of the latter officer in the colony, Sturt on 2 Oct. was made assistant commissioner of lands. The work of the survey, as well as that of allotting the land to settlers, was at that time particularly difficult in the new ‘province.’ Sturt and Frome did excellent work in reducing to order the chaos of the first rush of settlers, and the two men were fast friends while thus working together and throughout their lives. On 29 Aug. 1842 Sturt was moved to the post of registrar-general, and in January 1843 he volunteered to explore the centre of the continent, but his orders were delayed till dangerously late in the following year of drought. Yet he started in August 1844 with Mr. Poole and John Harris Browne and twelve other men, taking as draughtsman John McDouall Stuart [q. v.] (who in 1862 finally crossed the continent). The Darling was followed upwards from its junction with the Murray, 176 miles to Cawndilla. Thence Stanley Range was crossed into the depressed northern interior. The party suffered greatly from want of water. No rain fell from November to July. In January 1845, at latitude 29° 40′ and longitude 141° 45′, a good creek was found in the Rocky Glen, and at this depôt they remained for six months. They dug underground chambers for relief from the heat, and to make possible Sturt's writing and mapping. The officers were attacked by scurvy, of which Poole died. Sturt's precaution in taking sheep with his party proved invaluable in saving life. On the first rainfall in July, Sturt sent home a third of his party, moved forward the depôt, and rode sixty-nine miles westwards. Here progress was stopped by a large lake-bed, dry but for salt pools, yet too soft to cross. This lake is now known in its two branches as Lake Blanche and Lake Gregory; and, though not joined to Lake Torrens, as Sturt supposed, it yet forms part of the same remarkable series of central salt lakes. Baulked in a direction which in a better season might have led him to success, Sturt, on 14 Aug., with Browne and three men, set out for the north-west. On the 18th he discovered the watercourse named by him Strzelecki Creek, after Sir Paul Edmund Strzelecki [q. v.] Though partly dry, it contained large pools of water, and was sufficiently important for him to follow it up for over sixty miles. Crossing in succession three smaller creeks at distances of from fifteen to eighteen miles apart, Sturt and Browne plunged into a terrible district of sand ridges and stony desert, till at latitude 24° 30′ they were forced back by want of grass and water. On their return on 3 Oct. to their depôt at Fort Grey, they had ridden over nine hundred miles in seven weeks. After six days' rest Sturt, with Stuart and two fresh men, on 9 Oct. went north-eastwards, and, crossing Strzelecki Creek, he, on the 15th, discovered some forty miles further, in good country, Cooper's Creek, a fine stream. Then, turning northwestwards, they were again baffled by sand ridges and hopeless desert. Before returning to the depôt Sturt followed up the Cooper for over a hundred miles. But it was left to the later explorers, Kennedy and Gregory, to prove that the Cooper, the Strzelecki, and their dependent ‘creeks’ all form part of one