Page:Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, volume 2.djvu/147

 thermometer stood in the shade at three at 122°, or from 98° to 102° Fahrenheit, at sunset.'

The Darling may be justly considered the largest river which has been discovered in New South Wales, since it is formed by a junction of all the streams which were discovered by Mr. Oxley in 1818 (and these were five in number, each of considerable magnitude), as well as of those I met with in my journey of 1827; and thus it constitutes the great drain of a tract of mountainous country lying between the parallels of 27° and 33½°. But what ultimately becomes of this river so sustained, to what other channels it becomes united, what course it eventually pursues, beyond the spot where Captain Sturt and his comrade left it flowing through a desert country to the south-west, or on what coast it is discharged, if it really does make the sea at any point, remains wholly unknown, and is therefore still to be discovered.

The party were now glad to direct their steps towards Bathurst; but before they finally quitted these parched levels, they shaped a course to the eastward, with the view of meeting with the Castlereagh, the channel of which (one hundred and eighty yards in width) Mr. Oxley experienced no small difficulty in crossing, as the rains which had fallen on the mountains to the south-east, whence it derives its principal sources, had swollen its waters to the level of its upper banks. On making this river they traced it down full one hundred miles to its junction with another part of the Darling, the water of which they found even Salter than it was at the point at which the expedition had originally fallen in with it; nor did they find a sufficiency in the Castlereagh to meet their daily demands, for its bed was laid bare 'for a distance of thirty miles at a stretch,' which obliged our travellers to 'search the country round' for the little water which it had to yield them.

Surrounded as the party were by difficulties in a region 'deserted by the native tribes,' scarcely capable of sustaining animal life, and in which all the dogs of the expedition fell a sacrifice, still Captain Sturt appears to have been unwilling to quit his ground; for although the briny waters of the Darling were in themselves quite enough to have induced him to have made a hasty retreat southerly, to higher grounds and a better country, we, nevertheless, find him crossing the Salt River, to see what the country was in a north-westerly direction; nor does it appear that the curiosity of our travellers was at all satisfied, until they had penetrated a considerable distance on that course, where they found the ground uniformly level, and the surface in no part broken by either creek or minor water-course, the entire country around being, as far as could be seen from the highest tree, 'a boundless flat,' the elevation of which above the level of the sea was, pro-