Explorations in Australia | Page 2

being on this occasion accompanied by Mr. Stuart and two men.
The seventh day of their journey brought them to the banks of a fine
creek, now so well known as Cooper Creek in connection with the fate
of those unfortunate explorers, Burke and Wills. At two hundred miles
from Cooper Creek Captain Sturt and his party were again met by the
Stony Desert, but slightly varied in its aspect. Before abandoning his
attempt to proceed, the leader of the expedition laid the matter before
his companions, and he writes as follows: "I should be doing an
injustice to Mr. Stuart and my men, if I did not here mention that I told
them the position we were placed in, and the chance on which our
safety would depend if we went on. They might well have been
excused if they expressed an opinion contrary to such a course; but the
only reply they made me was to assure me that they were ready and
willing to follow me to the last."
With much reluctance, however, Captain Sturt determined to return to
Cooper Creek without delay. They travelled night and day without
interruption, and on the morning of their arrival at the creek, one of
those terrible hot north winds, so much dreaded by the colonists, began
to blow with unusual violence. Lucky was it for them that it had not
overtaken them in the Desert, for they could scarcely have survived it.
The heat was awful; a thermometer, graduated to 127 degrees, burst,
though sheltered in the fork of a large tree, and their skin was blistered
by a torrent of fine sand, which was driven along by the fury of the
hurricane. They still had fearful difficulties to encounter, but after an
absence of nineteen months they returned safely to Adelaide.
The discouraging account of the interior which was brought by Captain
Sturt did not prevent other explorers from making further attempts; but
the terrible fate of Kennedy and his party on York Peninsula, and the
utter disappearance of Leichardt's expedition, both in the same year
(1848), had a very decided influence in checking the progress of
Australian exploration. Seven years later, in 1855, Mr. Gregory landed
on the north-west coast for the purpose of exploring the Victoria River,
and after penetrating as far south as latitude 20 degrees 16 minutes,
longitude 131 degrees 44 minutes, he was compelled to proceed to the
head of the Gulf of Carpentaria, and thence to Sydney along the route
taken by Dr. Leichardt in 1844. Shortly after his return Mr. Gregory
was despatched by the Government of New South Wales in 1857, to

find, if possible, some trace of the lost expedition of the lamented
Leichardt; his efforts, however, did nothing to clear up the mystery that
enshrouds the fate of that celebrated explorer.* (* It is possible that Mr.
McKinlay has been hasty in the opinion he formed from the graves and
remains of white men shown to him by Keri Keri, and the story related
of their massacre. May they not belong to Leichardt's party?)
The colonists of South Australia have always been distinguished for
promoting by private aid and public grant the cause of exploration.
They usually kept somebody in the field, whose discoveries were
intended to throw light on the caprices of Lake Torrens, at one time a
vast inland sea, at another a dry desert of stones and baked mud. Hack,
Warburton, Freeling, Babbage, and other well-known names, are
associated with this particular district, and, in 1858, Stuart started to the
north-west of the same country, accompanied by one white man
(Forster) and a native. In this, the first expedition which he had the
honour to command, he was aided solely by his friend Mr. William
Finke, but in his later journeys Mr. James Chambers also bore a share
of the expense.* (* It is greatly to be regretted that both these
gentlemen are since dead. Mr. Chambers did not survive to witness the
success of his friend's later expeditions, and the news of Mr. Finke's
death reached us while these sheets were going through the press.) This
journey was commenced in May, 1858, from Mount Eyre in the north
to Denial and Streaky Bays on the west coast of the Port Lincoln
country. On this journey Mr. Stuart accomplished one of the most
arduous feats in all his travels, having, with one man only (the black
having basely deserted them), pushed through a long tract of dense
scrub and sand with unusual rapidity, thus saving his own life and that
of his companion. During this part of the journey they were without
food or water, and his companion was thoroughly dispirited and
despairing of success. This expedition occupied him till September,
1858, and was undertaken with