394: ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



which the rivers he had been tracing discharged themselves. This opinion 

 was probably supported by the fact that the mouth of the largest of the 

 Australian rivers, the Murray, had been overlooked by Captain Flinders, and 

 was not discovered till fifteen years after Mr. Oxley's discoveries, by Captain 

 Sturt. This opinion was adopted by subsequent travellers. In 1845, Mr. 

 Eyre, one of the most distinguished explorers of Australia, in a paper commu- 

 nicated to the Eoyal Geographical Society, announced that he had arrived at 

 different conclusions, namely, that the interior would be found generally to 

 be of a very low level, consisting of sand, alternating with many basins of 

 dried salt lakes, or such as were covered only by shallow salt water or mud, as 

 was the case with Lake Torrens. He also said that it was more than pro- 

 bable there might be many detached, and even higher ranges, similar to the 

 Gawler Eange, and that, interspersed among these ranges, intervals of a 

 better or even of a rich and fertile country might be met with. In 1850, 

 Mr. J. B. Jukes, in his valuable work on " The Physical Condition of 

 Australia," stated his opinion to be that the interior consisted of immense 

 desert plains, which seemed to extend to the sea coast round the Gulf of 

 Carpentaria, or north to that of the Great Australian Bight on the south, and 

 to stretch along the north-west coast to Collier Bay. The general opinion at 

 present entertained on this point seemed to be very similar to that of Mr. 

 Jukes, excepting, perhaps, that it was thought that the deserts did not reach 

 so far to the north, and that the northern parts w r ere considered to consist of 

 .some fertile and promising regions. The chief grounds on which these 

 deductions had been made, were the known facts as to the climate and 

 meteorology of Australia, and the absence of large rivers and other features. 

 It was well known that the Australian colonies were subject in summer to 

 occasional blasts of what is called the hot wind, from its extremely high 

 temperature. This hot wind always blew from the interior ; in New South 

 Wales and Tasmania, its direction being from the north-west, and from the 

 north in Port Philip and South Australia. The breath of this wind was like 

 the blast from a fiery furnace, increasing the mean temperature of a summer's 

 day, on the westerly side of the eastern cordillera, to 40 ; on the eastern 

 side, both in New South "Wales and Tasmania, to 25 and 30 ; and while 

 during the hot wind the thermometer rose to 100, or even 115 in the shade, 

 with the southerly squall there was sometimes a sudden fall of full 40 in the 

 course of half or even a quarter of an hour. This wind swept up from the 

 interior clouds of dust and sand, sometimes intermixed with gritty matter, 

 large enough to strike with painful acuteness on the face. Count Strzelecki, 

 while sailing from New Zealand to New South Wales, was prevented from 

 making the harbor of Port Jackson for two successive days, by the violence 

 of this hot wind. Though sixty miles from the shore, the heat exceeded 90, 

 and the sails of the ship were covered with a small powder by the breeze. 

 The hot winds were, indeed, identical with the sirocco blowing from the great 

 Sahara of Africa, and similar winds in other parts of the globe. It had been 

 justly said that these hot winds experienced in the southern parts of 

 Australia, could have no other origin than by a cm-rent of air blowing 

 over some large expanse of burning desert, and our knowledge of tin? 



