Expedition into Central Australia | Page 7

had found no approximate country

likely to be of present or remote advantage to the Government by
which we had been sent forth; the noble river on whose buoyant waters
we were hurried along, seemed to have been misplaced, through such
an extent of desert did it pass, as if it was destined thus never to be of
service to civilized man, and for a short time the honour of a successful
undertaking, as far as human exertion could ensure it, was all that
remained to us after its fatigues and its dangers had terminated, as the
reader will conclude from the tenour of the above passage; for,
although at the termination of the Murray, we came upon a country, the
aspect of which indicated more than usual richness and fertility, we
were unable, from exhausted strength, to examine it as we could have
wished, and thus the fruits of our labours appeared to have been taken
from us, just as we were about to gather them. But if, amidst difficulties
and disappointments of no common description, I was led to doubt the
wisdom of Providence, I was wrong. The course of events has
abundantly shewn how presumptuous it is in man to question the
arrangements of that Allwise Power whose operations and purposes are
equally hidden from us, for in six short years from the time when I
crossed the Lake Victoria, and landed on its shores, that country formed
another link in the chain of settlements round the Australian continent,
and in its occupation was found to realize the most sanguine
expectations I had formed of it. Its rich and lovely valleys, which in a
state of nature were seldom trodden by the foot of the savage, became
the happy retreats of an industrious peasantry; its plains were studded
over with cottages and corn-fields; the very river which had appeared to
me to have been so misplaced, was made the high road to connect the
eastern and southern shores of a mighty continent; the superfluous
stock of an old colony was poured down its banks into the new
settlement to save it from the trials and vicissitudes to which colonies,
less favourably situated, have been exposed; and England, throughout
her wide domains, possessed not, for its extent, a fairer or a more
promising dependency than the province of South Australia. Such,
there can be no doubt, have been the results of an expedition from
which human foresight could have anticipated no practical good.
During my progress down the Murray River I had passed the junction
of a very considerable stream with it [Note 3. The Darling], in lat. 34
degrees 8 minutes and long. 142 degrees. Circumstances, however,

prevented my examining it to any distance above its point of union with
the main river. Yet, coming as it did, direct from the north, and similar
as it was to the Darling in its upper branches, neither had I, nor any of
the men then with me, and who had accompanied me when I
discovered the Darling in 1828, the slightest doubt as to its identity.
Still, the fact might reasonably be disputed by others, more especially
as there was abundant space for the formation of another river, between
the point where I first struck the Darling and this junction.
It was at all events a matter of curious speculation to the world at large,
and was a point well worthy of further investigation. Such evidently
was the opinion of her Majesty's Government at the time, for in
accordance with it, in the year 1835, Sir Thomas Mitchell, the
Surveyor-General of the colony of New South Wales, was directed to
lead an expedition into the interior, to solve the question, by tracing the
further course of the Darling. This officer left Sydney in May, 1835,
and pushing to the N.W. gradually descended to the low country on
which the Macquarie river all but terminates its short course. In due
time he gained the Bogan river (the New Year's Creek of my first
expedition, and so called by my friend, Mr. Hamilton Hume, who
accompanied me as my assistant, because he crossed it on that day),
and tracing it downwards to the N. W., Sir Thomas Mitchell ultimately
gained the banks of the Darling, where I had before been upon it, in
latitude 30 degrees. He then traced it downwards to the W.S.W {S.S.W.
in published text} to latitude 32 degrees 26 seconds. At this point he
determined to abandon all further pursuit of the river, and he
accordingly returned to Sydney, in consequence, as he informs us, of
his having ascertained that just below his camp a small stream joined
the Darling from the westward. The Surveyor-General had noticed
distant hills also to the west; and it is therefore to be