Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/119

Rh and struck a large river, with many affluents, to which, he gave the name of the Darling. This river, flowing from north-east to south-west, drains the marshes in which the Macquarie and other streams from the south appeared to be lost. The course of the Murrumbidgee, a deep and rapid river, was followed by the same eminent explorer in his second expedition in 1831 with a more satisfactory result. He travelled on this occasion nearly 2000 miles, and discovered that both the Murrumbidgee, carrying with it the waters of the Lachlan morass, and likewise the Darling, from a more northerly region, finally joined another and larger river. This stream, the Murray, in the upper part of its course, runs in a north-westerly direction, but afterwards turning southwards, almost at a right angle, expands into Lake Alexandrina on the south coast, about 60 miles S.E. of the town of Adelaide, and finally enters the sea at Encounter Bay in E. long. 139.

After gaining a practical solution of the problem of the destination of the westward-flowing rivers, Sir Thomas Mitchell, in 1835, led an expedition northward to the upper branches of the Darling ; but the party meeting with a sad disaster in the death of Mr Cunningham, the eminent botanist, who was murdered by the natives on the Bogan Eiver, further exploration of that region was left to be undertaken by Dr Leichardt, nine years later, and by the son of Sir Thomas Mitchell. Meantime, from the new colony of Adelaide, South Australia, on the shores of Gulf St Vincent, a series of adventurous journeys to the north and to the west was commenced by Mr Eyre, who explored a country much more difficult of access, and more forbid ding in aspect, than the &quot; Kiverina &quot; of the eastern pro vinces. He performed in 1840 a feat of extraordinary per- sunal daring, travelling all the way along the barren sea- coast of the Great Australian Bight, from Spencer Gulf to King George s Sound. Mr Eyre also explored the interior north of the head of Spencer Gulf, where he was misled, however, by appearances to form an erroneous theory about the water-surfaces named Lake Torrens. It was left to the veteran explorer, Sturt, to achieve the arduous enterprise of penetrating from the Darling northward to the very centre of the continent. This was in 1845, the route lying for the most part over a stony desert, where the heat (reaching 131 Fahr.), with scorching winds, caused much suffering to the party. The most northerly point reached by Sturt on this occasion was about S. lat. 24 25. His unfortunate successors, Burke and Wills, travelled through the same district sixteen years later; and other expeditions were organised, both from the north and from the south, which aimed at learning the fate of these travellers, as well as that of Dr Leichardt. These efforts completed our knowledge of different routes across the entire breadth of Australia, in the longitude of the Gulf of Carpentaria; while the enterprising journeys of Mac- Douall Stuart, a companion of Sturt, obtained in 1862 a direct passage from South Australia northward to tho shores of the Malayan Sea. This route has been utilised by the construction of an overland telegraph from Adelaide to the northern coast.

A military station having been fixed by the British Go vernment at Port Victoria, on the coast of Arnhem Land, for the protection of shipwrecked mariners on the north coast, it was thought desirable tc find an overland route between this settlement and Moreton Bay, in what then was the northern portion of New South Wales, now called Queensland. This was the object of Dr Leichardt s expe dition in 1844, which proceeded first along the banks of the Dawson and the Mackenzie, tributaries of the Fitzroy River, in Queensland. It thence passed farther north to the Burdekin, ascending to the source of that river, and turned westward across a table-land, from which th-are was an easy descent to the Gulf of Carpentaria. Skirting the low shores of this gulf, all the way round its upper half to the Roper, Leichardt crossed Arnhem Land to the Alli gator River, which he descended to the western shore of the peninsula, and arrived at Port Victoria, otherwise Port Essington, after a journey of 3000 miles, performed within a year and three months. In 1847 Leichardt undertook a much more formidable task, that of crossing the entire continent from east to west. His starting point was on the Fitzroy Downs, north of the River Condamine, in Queens land, between the 26th and 27th degrees of S. latitude. But this eminent explorer had not proceeded far into the interior before he met his death, his last despatch dating from the Cogoon, April 3, 1848. In the same region, from 1845 to 1847, Sir Thomas Mitchell and Mr E. B. Ken nedy explored the northern tributaries of the Darling, and a river in S. lat. 24, named the Barcoo or Victoria, which flows to the south-west. This river was more thoroughly examined by Mr A. C. Gregory in 1858. Mr Kennedy lost his life in 1848, being killed by the natives while attempting to explore the peninsula of Cape York, from Rockingham Bay to Weymouth Bay.

Among the performances of less renown, but of much practical utility in surveying and opening new paths through the country, we may mention that of Captain Banister, showing the way across the southern part of West Australia, from Swan River to King George s Sound, and that of Messrs Robinson and G. H. Haydon in 1844, making good the route from Port Phillip to Gipps Land with loaded drays, through a dense tangled scrub, which had been described by Strzelecki as his worst obstacle. Again, in West Australia there were the explorations of the Arrow- smith, the Murchison, the Gascoyne, and the Ashburton Rivers, by Captain Grey, Mr Roe, Governor Fitzgerald, Mr R. Austin, and the brothers Gregory, whose discoveries have great importance from a geographical point of view. These local researches, and the more comprehensive attempts of Leichardt and Mitchell to solve the chief prob lems of Australian geography, must yield in importance to the grand achievement of Mr Stuart in 1862. The first of his tours independently performed, in 1858 and 1859, were around the South Australian lakes, namely, Lake Torrens, Lake Eyre, and Lake Gairdner. These waters had been erroneously taken for parts of one vast horse shoe or sickle-shaped lake, only some twenty miles broad, believed to encircle a large portion of the inland country, with drainage at one end by a marsh into Spencer Gulf. The mistake, shown in all the old maps of Australia, had originated in a curious optical illusion. W T hen Mr Eyre viewed the country from Mount Deception in 1840, look ing between Lake Torrens and the lake which now bears his own name, the refraction of light from the glittering crust of salt that covers a large space of stony or sandy ground produced an appearance of water. The error was discovered, after eighteen years, by the explorations of Mr Babbage and Major Warburton in 1858, while Mr Stuart, about the same time, gained a more complete knowledge of the same district.

A reward of 10,000 having been offered by the Legis lature of South Australia to the first man who should traverse the whole continent from south to north, starting from the city of Adelaide, Mr Stuart resolved to make the attempt. He started in March 1860, passing Lake Torrens and Lake Eyre, beyond which he found a pleasant, fertile country till he crossed the M Donnoil range of mountains, just under the line of the tropic of Capricorn. On the 23d of April he reached a mountain in S. lat. nearly ..22, and E. long, nearly 134, which is the most central marked point of the Australian continent, and has been named Central Mount Stuart. Mr Stuart did not finish his task on