Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/33

 Here he halted, reared the flag of his country, and drank to the health of his sovereign. And yet, even minus the poetry, we must envy Stuart the luxury of his rare triumph.

Let us recall his account of the day on which the party reached the sea. Preserving his reckoning, Stuart was aware that the coast must at last be close at hand, but with the view of giving his party a pleasant surprise, he had withheld the information from nearly all. Already his attentive ears had detected the low boom of the still ocean in front. But the sounds are lost upon his unwitting comrades, and little do they anticipate what is to greet their eyes when they have stepped through that coast fringe of scrub that now confronts them. The narrow belt is soon passed, and to their surprise and delight, the great Indian Ocean, the object of their constant thought for months previous, is expanded before them!