It Is Not Improbable That In Some Such A Flood Poor Leichhardt And His Little Band Lost Their Lives, And All Trace Of Their Fate Has Been Destroyed.

These experiences have caused some doubt and despondency as to the future of the new Settlement, and the question is now being agitated in the South Australian Parliament as to the desirability or not of abandoning it.

Western Australia has formed the Settlements of Camden Harbor, and Nickol Bay. The latter (the country around which was explored by Mr. Francis Gregory, brother to the Surveyor-General of Queensland, in 1861), appears to have progressed favorably, the Grey, Gascoigne, Oakover and Lyons Rivers affording inducements to stockholders to occupy them, but the Settlement of Camden Harbor at the time of the visit of Mr. Stow in his boat-voyage from Adam Bay to Champion Bay, was being abandoned by the colonists, the country being unsuitable for stock, and it would appear from that gentleman's account that the whole of the north-west coast of the continent, from its general character, offers but little inducement for settlement.

[footnote] *Since this was written the settlement has been abandoned. [NOTE - the footnote in the INTRODUCTION does not have a referent in the text - there is no asterisk in the text. It is not clear whether the 'settlement' it refers to as having been abandoned is at Adam Bay or in Western Australia.]

The explorations of Francis Gregory to the eastward from Nickol Bay, and of the Surveyor-General to the south from the Victoria River, were both arrested by wastes of drift-sand, whilst those from the western seaboard have not been extended further inland than to more than an average of 3 degrees of longitude.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 8 of 205
Words from 2043 to 2332 of 55599