Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/70

 present the frontier township upon the advancing wave of colonization northwards. From this remote outport McKinlay and his party gradually made their way southwards through the three intervening colonies of Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria, with little other impediment than the repeated gratulations and fêtes awarded them by the colonists.

RESULTS OF RECENT EXPLORATION OF INTERIOR AUSTRALIA.

PHYSICAL FEATURES AND CLIMATE.

We have now some reliable knowledge of the character of the interior of Australia. The features of the vast expanse seem latterly to have improved upon every successive acquaintance we have been enabled to make with them. We may at length conclude, in a gathering up of all our data, that the Empire possesses in Australia a very much larger territory available for the use of its people than was supposed to be the case several years ago. Then where is and what is the great Desert—that arid waste supposed to comprise the greater part of this interior space? Is it a phantom that has at length been dispelled? and were all the toils and sufferings of Sturt a