Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 55.djvu/144

 lacustrine delta, whose upper waters, found by Sir Thomas Livingstone Mitchell [q. v.] in Queensland on 14 Sept. 1845, were by him mistaken for the Victoria of the north. This river is now known as the Cooper or Barcoo.

On returning to the depot Sturt fell ill with scurvy, but by long trying stages gained the Darling—270 miles distant—and finally, after an absence of nineteen months, his party arrived at Adelaide. Arrowsmith puts the mileage of this expedition at ‘over 3,450,’ and says that Sturt attained to within 150 miles of the centre of the continent. In 1849 he published his ‘Narrative of an Expedition into Central Australia, 1844–1846, with a notice of the Province of South Australia in 1847’ (2 vols.).

But Sturt's explorations were only episodes in his active life. From 1839 to 1842 he held his appointment of commissioner of lands. From 1842 to 25 Aug. 1849 he was registrar-general, with a seat in the executive and legislative councils, and from 28 Sept. 1845 he was also colonial treasurer. On 25 Aug. 1849 he became colonial secretary, and held that office till the close of 1851, when he retired on a pension granted by the colony. In March 1853 he returned with his family to England, and till his death on 16 June 1869 he lived at Cheltenham, maintaining to the last his keen interest in Australian exploration, and actively aiding by his counsels in the preparations of later expeditions. He was a fellow of the Royal Geographical and of the Linnean Societies, and in May 1847 the former society presented him with their founder's gold medal. In 1869 he was nominated K.C.M.G., but he died without receiving that honour. He left four children—three sons and a daughter. Colonel Napier George Sturt, R.E., is the eldest son.

The chief results of Sturt's explorations were the general survey of the largest river system of Australia and the opening up of South Australia and of its extensive water communication; while he was the first traveller, for a long time the only one, to approach the centre of Australia. The volumes in which he recorded his journeys, written amid hardships and under the drawback of impaired eyesight, aim at no literary effect, yet charm by their vivid narrative. They contain many illustrations from his own hand which give proof of his artistic talents, and especially of his rare skill in drawing and colouring birds and animals. His attainments in various branches of natural science, especially in ornithology and botany, were considerable. His fellow explorers, Eyre and Harris-Browne, wrote with enthusiasm of the qualities which enabled him to pursue among savages a path never stained by bloodshed.

Duplicate portraits of Sturt by Crossland are respectively in the council chamber at Adelaide and in the possession of Miss Sturt. Another portrait by the same artist hangs in the art gallery, Adelaide. A crayon drawing, executed by Koberwein in 1868, is now in the possession of Colonel Napier George Sturt. Of two busts by Summers one is in the art gallery at Adelaide, and the other belongs to C. Halley Knight.

[Capt. Sturt's Journals, &c., above mentioned, also some manuscript papers by him and a manuscript Journal of his ‘overland’ journey down the Hume and Murray; Royal Geographical Society's Journals, vols. xiv. and xvii. (1847); Cannon's Historical Record of the 39th Foot; Address by Sir Samuel Davenport at Inaugural Meeting of the South Australian Branch of the Geographical Society of Australasia; Napier's Colonisation; Hovell and Hume's Journey of Discovery in 1824; A Short Account of the Public Life and Discoveries in Australia of Capt. Sturt (reprinted in 1859 from a South Australian paper); John Arrowsmith's maps and memoranda.] 

STURT, JOHN (1658–1730), engraver, was born in London on 6 April 1658, and at the age of seventeen was apprenticed to Robert White [q. v.], in whose manner he engraved a number of small portraits as frontispieces to books. Becoming associated with John Ayres [q. v.], he engraved the most important of that famous writing-master's books on calligraphy, and acquired celebrity for his skill in such work; he engraved the Lord's Prayer within the space of a silver halfpenny, the Creed in that of a silver penny, and an elegy on Queen Mary on so small a scale that it could be inserted in a finger-ring. Sturt's most remarkable production was the Book of Common Prayer, executed on 188 silver plates, all adorned with borders and vignettes, the frontispiece being a portrait of George I, on which are inscribed, in characters so minute as to be legible only with a magnifying glass, the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, the Commandments, the prayer for the royal family, and the twenty-first psalm. This was published in 1717, and in 1721 he engraved, in a similar manner, the ‘Orthodox Communicant.’ He was extremely industrious, and executed the illustrations to many of the religious and artistic publications of the time, including Bragge's ‘Passion of Our Saviour,’ 1694; the elder Samuel Wesley's ‘History of the Old and New Testament in Verse,’ 1704 and 1715; the English editions of Audran's ‘Perspective of the Human Body,’ Pozzo's ‘Rules of Per-