Expedition into Central Australia | Page 6

beneficent
Creator, for as the sacred stream rewards the husbandman with a
double harvest, so does the Murray replenish the exhausted reservoirs
of the poor children of the desert, with numberless fish, and resuscitates
myriads of crayfish that had laid dormant underground; without which
supply of food, and the flocks of wild fowl that at the same time cover
the creeks and lagoons, it is more than probable, the first navigators of
the Murray would not have heard a human voice along its banks; but so
it is, that in the wide field of nature, we see the hand of an over-ruling
Providence, evidences of care and protection from some unseen quarter,
which strike the mind with overwhelming conviction, that whether in
the palace or in the cottage, in the garden, or in the desert, there is an
eye upon us. Not to myself do I accord any credit in that I returned
from my wanderings to my home. Assuredly, if it had not been for
other guidance than the exercise of my own prudence, I should have
perished: and I feel satisfied the reader of these humble pages, will
think as I do when he shall have perused them.
An inspection of the accompanying chart, will shew that the course of
the Murray, as far as the 138 degrees meridian is to the W.N.W., but
that, at that point, it turns suddenly to the south, and discharges itself
into Lake Victoria, which again communicates with the ocean, in the
bight of Encounter Bay. This outlet is called the "Sea mouth of the
Murray," and immediately to the eastward of it, is the Sand Hill, now
called Barker's Knoll--under which the excellent and amiable officer
after whom it is named fell by the hands of the natives, in the cause of
geographical research.
Running parallel with its course from the southerly bend, or great N.W.
angle of the Murray, there is a line of hills, terminating southwards, at
Cape Jarvis; but, extending northwards beyond the head of Spencer's
Gulf. These hills contain the mineral wealth of South Australia, and

immediately to the westward of them is the fair city of Adelaide.
On gaining the level interior, the Murray passes through a desert
country to the 140 degrees meridian, when it enters the great fossil
formation, of which I shall have to speak hereafter. In lat. 34 degrees,
and in long. 142 degrees, the Darling forms a junction with it;
consequently, as that river rises in latitude 27 degrees, and in long. 152
degrees, its direct course will be about S.W. There is a distance of nine
degrees of latitude, therefore, between their respective sources, and, as
the Darling forms a considerable angle with the Murray at this junction,
it necessarily follows, as I have had occasion to remark, that the two
rivers must receive all the drainage from the eastward, falling into that
angle. If I have been sufficiently clear in explaining the geographical
position and character of these two rivers, which in truth almost make
an island of the S.E. angle of the Australian continent, it will only
remain for me to add in this place, that neither the Murray nor the
Darling receive any tributary stream from the westward or northward,
and at the time at which I commenced my last enterprise, the Darling
was the boundary of inland discovery, if I except the journey of my
gallant friend Eyre, to Lake Torrens, and the discovery by him of the
country round Mount Serle. Sir Thomas Mitchell had traced the
Darling, from the point at which I had been obliged from the want of
good water to abandon it, in 1828, to lat. 32 degrees 26 minutes, and
had marked down some hills to the westward of it. Still I do not think
that I detract from his merit, and I am sure I do not wish to do so, when
I say that his having so marked them can hardly be said to have given
us any certain knowledge of the Cis-Darling interior.
More than sixteen years had elapsed from the period when I undertook
the exploration of the Murray River, to that at which I commenced my
preparations for an attempt to penetrate Central Australia. Desolate,
however, as the country for the most part had been, through which I
passed, my voyage down that river had been the forerunner of events I
could neither have anticipated or foreseen. I returned indeed to Sydney,
disheartened and dissatisfied at the result of my investigations. To all
who were employed in that laborious undertaking, it had proved one of
the severest trial and of the greatest privation; to myself individually it
had been one of ceaseless anxiety. We had not, as it seemed, made any
discovery to gild our enterprise,