Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/537

Rh "Certainly," was the reply, "Captain Charles Sturt was sent out by the Sydney Government to make an exploration beyond the Blue Mountains in the direction of the interior of the continent. Between 1827 and 1830 he made two expeditions, in which he discovered the Darling and Murray rivers; on the second expedition he descended those streams in a whale-boat which he had taken along for the purpose of navigating any rivers or lakes into which the smaller streams already discovered took their course. The Macquarie, the Lachlan, and the Murrumbidgee flow westward from the Dividing Range, but their outlets were then unknown.

"On his voyage down the Murray to the sea Sturt had several fights with the natives, underwent many hardships and accidents, and found his men greatly reduced in strength. There he was obliged to turn back and propel his boat against the stream to the point whence it started.

"It was a toilsome journey. The natives opposed the explorers, and they fought their way from place to place, and it was only by the superiority of their fire-arms over the primitive weapons of the blacks that they escaped with their lives. For fifteen hundred miles they travelled in this way, and when they reached their old camp, on the twenty-seventh day of their upward voyage, Sturt was hardly able to stand.