Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/29

. Then, again, Gregory's expedition, in the year 1856, to explore the river Victoria of North Australia, had been brought to an end by apparently another portion of the same desert, equally dried up, and equally destitute of life. The fate of the gallant Leichhardt, too, some years before Gregory, seemed a climax of discouragement to Stuart's project. After his successful and highly important journey, in 1844-5, through the north-eastern districts of Australia to Port Essington, Leichhardt entered upon the bold project of an expedition across Australia, east and west, from the present colony of Queensland to that of West Australia. With characteristic ardour and resolution, he plunged with his party into the trackless bush, but he never emerged from its then unexplored and unknown expanse.

Stuart, then, in the year 1860, resumed this forlorn hope. He passed the centre in a line about five degrees to the westward of Sturt. He encountered no great desert, but on the contrary much good country, watered by many springs, ponds, and running streams. Well grassed plains and forest lands were intermingled with tracts of poor and sterile soil. On the whole, his entire route presented a fair average of the Australian soil as already known in the settled parts and their explored vicinities. Stuart had made for the dynamic centre, if we may so speak, of Australia,