Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/32

, denied the longed-for and final triumph to the other weary travellers from the south. Landsborough, by taking his start from Carpentaria itself, had certainly defeated this difficulty, but the parties both of Burke and McKinlay were unable to advance further than within some four or five miles of the coast. Their further course was arrested by boggy ground and deep mangrove creeks, impassable to the travellers, with the few means at their command. The sea was not visible when they were compelled to turn from it, but its near vicinity was amply indicated by the tidal rush of sea-water, and by a rise and fall of from ten to eleven feet.

Indeed, to say the truth, neither this muddy shore nor yet that of the Van Diemen's Gulf trodden by Stuart, at all satisfy the demands of poetry or imagination, when these fanciful impersonations will roam over the sparkling waters and pebbly beaches of an Indian clime, or through far-off scenes which arouse hope and expectation in proportion to the difficulty of reaching them. Stuart seems to have paced along a very ordinary sea-beach. Swamp and bog combined their obstacles to arrest him also, and decided him not to waste the remaining strength of his party in an effort to proceed coastwise westerly to the mouth of the important river Adelaide, although distant only about fifty miles beyond his furthest seacoast progress.