Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/28

 length of river system, whose head waters—discovered and traced by Mitchell twelve years before far into the northern interior—were sanguinely conjectured to be the Victoria of North-west Australia, were now traced southwards, emerging through Strzelecki Creek and Lake Torrens into the sea at Spencer Gulf. Here was a pretentious river system truly, if estimated by the length of its course, and the capacity and depth of its rocky and rugged bed. But, like the mineral that had all the characters of coal excepting combustibility, the Barcoo wanted the one element of water, and the traveller experienced difficulty at times in finding in its spacious channel enough to sustain his party in existence.

Stuart's first success emboldened him to deeds of higher daring. In the year 1860, assisted mainly by private friends, he set forth to make the traverse of Australia. This was an exploit requiring at that time rare nerve and courage. Fifteen years had elapsed since Sturt, the experienced and indefatigable Australian traveller, had been baffled in the same attempt, Stuart himself having been one of his party. The sterile desert which Sturt then described as hopelessly interrupting his progress—an arid, burning, lifeless waste, from which he with difficulty extricated himself, and which has since borne his name—had given a very problematical aspect to the great Australian