Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/66

, a circumstance alluded to by Mr. McKinlay as most unaccountable. On the whole, however, these later Australian expeditions warn us that we must extend somewhat our estimates, vague as they previously were, of the Australian aboriginal population, and no longer imagine that an area equal to two-thirds of that of Europe, had contained, before the inroad of our colonization, no more than about 200,000 human beings.

Quitting the lake region, the party had to pass through Sturt' s Desert, lying north and west of their position. Explorers since Sturt have successively contracted the dimensions, and mitigated the bad repute of this region. While Eyre, in 1841, witnessed the effects of deluge, Sturt, four years afterwards, encountered the opposite extreme of drought; and again, in a region where the latter had nearly perished with thirst, McKinlay and his expedition were all but swept away by a flood. Had these, in their turn of incident, been floated safely down for 300 or 400 miles, they might have witnessed Lake Torrens once more, assuming its impromptu existence; only, however, to suffer an equally rapid disappearance under that extraordinary evaporative power of the Australian atmosphere alluded to by both Waterhouse and McKinlay. The flooded state of the country on the left compelled the party to make a considerable detour to the eastward or right of the intended direction,