Australia Twice Traversed | Page 7

last expedition into tropical Australia was in 1845. On
this expedition he discovered a large river running in a north-westerly
direction, and as its channel was so large, and its general appearance so
grand, he conjectured that it would prove to be the Victoria River of
Captain Lort Stokes, and that it would run on in probably increasing
size, or at least in undiminished magnificence, through the 1100 or
1200 miles of country that intervened between his own and Captain
Stokes's position. He therefore called it the Victoria River. Gregory
subsequently discovered that Mitchell's Victoria turned south, and was
one and the same watercourse called Cooper's Creek by Sturt. The
upper portion of this watercourse is now known by its native name of
the Barcoo, the name Victoria being ignored. Mitchell always had
surveyors with him, who chained as he went every yard of the
thousands of miles he explored. He was knighted for his explorations,
and lived to enjoy the honour; so indeed was Sturt, but in his case it
was only a mockery, for he was totally blind and almost on his
deathbed when the recognition of his numerous and valuable services
was so tardily conferred upon him. (Dr. W.H. Browne, who
accompanied Sturt to Central Australia in 1843-5 as surgeon and
naturalist, is living in London; and another earlier companion of the
Father of Australian Exploration, George McCleay, still survives.)
These two great travellers were followed by, or worked simultaneously,
although in a totally different part of the continent, namely the
north-west coast, with Sir George Grey in 1837-1839. His labours and
escapes from death by spear-wounds, shipwreck, starvation, thirst, and
fatigue, fill his volumes with incidents of the deepest interest. Edward
Eyre, subsequently known as Governor Eyre, made an attempt to reach,
in 1840-1841, Central Australia by a route north from the city of
Adelaide; and as Sturt imagined himself surrounded by a desert, so
Eyre thought he was hemmed in by a circular or horse-shoe-shaped salt
depression, which he called Lake Torrens; because, wherever he tried
to push northwards, north-westwards, eastwards, or north-eastwards, he
invariably came upon the shores of one of these objectionable and
impassable features. As we now know, there are several of them with
spaces of traversable ground between, instead of the obstacle being one

continuous circle by which he supposed he was surrounded. In
consequence of his inability to overcome this obstruction, Eyre gave up
the attempt to penetrate into Central Australia, but pushing westerly,
round the head of Flinders' Spencer's Gulf, where now the inland
seaport town of Port Augusta stands, he forced his way along the coast
line from Port Lincoln to Fowler's Bay (Flinders), and thence along the
perpendicular cliffs of the Great Australian Bight to Albany, at King
George's Sound.
This journey of Eyre's was very remarkable in more ways than one; its
most extraordinary incident being the statement that his horses
travelled for seven days and nights without water. I have travelled with
horses in almost every part of Australia, but I know that after three days
and three nights without water horses would certainly knock up, die, or
become utterly useless, and it would be impossible to make them
continue travelling. Another remarkable incident of his march is
strange enough. One night whilst Eyre was watching the horses, there
being no water at the encampment, Baxter, his only white companion,
was murdered by two little black boys belonging to South Australia,
who had been with Eyre for some time previously. These little boys
shot Baxter and robbed the camp of nearly all the food and ammunition
it contained, and then, while Eyre was running up from the horses to
where Baxter lay, decamped into the bush and were only seen the
following morning, but never afterwards. One other and older boy, a
native of Albany, whither Eyre was bound, now alone remained. Eyre
and this boy (Wylie) now pushed on in a starving condition, living
upon dead fish or anything they could find for several weeks, and never
could have reached the Sound had they not, by almost a miracle, fallen
in with a French whaling schooner when nearly 300 miles had yet to be
traversed. The captain, who was an Englishman named Rossiter, treated
them most handsomely; he took them on board for a month while their
horses recruited on shore--for this was a watering place of Flinders--he
then completely refitted them with every necessary before he would
allow them to depart. Eyre in gratitude called the place Rossiter Bay,
but it seems to have been prophetically christened previously by the
ubiquitous Flinders, under the name of Lucky Bay. Nearly all the
watering places visited by Eyre consisted of the drainage from great
accumulations of pure white sand or hummocks, which were previously

discovered by the