With The Exception Of The Gawler Range, Which Lies Between Streaky Bay And Mount Arden, This Dreary Waste Was One

Almost uniform table-land of fossil formation, with an elevation of from three to five hundred feet, covered for the

Most part by dense impenetrable scrubs, and varied only on its surface by occasional sandy or rocky undulations.

What then can be the nature of that mysterious interior, bounded as it is by a table-land without river or lakes, without watercourses or drainage of any kind, for so vast a distance? Can it be that the whole is one immense interminable desert, or an alternation of deserts and shallow salt lakes like Lake Torrens? Conjecture is set at defiance by the impenetrable arrangements of nature; where, the more we pry into her secrets, the more bewildered and uncertain become all our speculations.

It has been a common and a popular theory to imagine the existence of an inland sea, and this theory has been strengthened and confirmed by the opinion of so talented, so experienced, and so enterprising a traveller as my friend Captain Sturt, in its favour. That gentleman, with the noble and disinterested enthusiasm by which he has ever been characterised, has once more sacrificed the pleasure and quiet of domestic happiness, at the shrine of enterprise and science. With the ardour of youth, and the perseverance and judgment of riper years, he is even now traversing the trackless wilds, and seeking to lift up that veil which has hitherto hung over their recesses. May he be successful to the utmost of his wishes, and may he again rejoin in health and safety his many friends, to forget in their approbation and admiration the toils he has encountered, and to enjoy the rewards and laurels which will have been so hardly earned, and so well deserved.

It was in August, 1844, that Captain Sturt set out upon his arduous undertaking, with a numerous and well equipped party, and having provisions calculated to last them for eighteen months. I had the pleasure of accompanying the expedition as far as the Rufus (about 240 miles from Adelaide), to render what assistance I could, in passing up, on friendly terms among the more distant natives of the Murray. Since my return, Captain Sturt has been twice communicated with, and twice heard from, up to the time I left the Colony, on the 21st December, 1844. The last official communication addressed to the Colonial Government will be found in Chapter IX. of Notes on the Aborigines. The following is a copy of a private letter to John Morphett, Esq M.C., and published in the Adelaide Observer of the 9th November, 1844: -

"14th October, 1844.

"I left Lake Victoria, as I told you in a former letter, on the 18th of September, and again cut across the country to the Murray. As we travelled along we saw numerous tracks of wild cattle leading from the marshes to the river, and we encamped at the junction of the river and a lagoon (one of the most beautiful spots you ever saw), just where these tracks were most numerous.

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