240 BIOGHAPIIICAL SKETCH OF THE 



their further progress on it was stopped by the river losing 

 itself in swamps, which were named the Lachlan swamps, in 

 S. lat. 33° 15', and E. long. 147' 45'. Mr Oxley then de- 

 termined to push forward to the South Coast, so as to strike 

 it about Cape Northumberland. Their boats were conse- 

 quently hauled up the river's bank, and such portion of their 

 heavy baggage as could not conveniently be carried with 

 them, was left with the boats ; and on the 1 8th, they started 

 with heavily laden packhorses for their ulterior destination. 

 They continued their course, which was nearly S.W., until 

 the 4th of June, when the increased sterility of the country, 

 which they called the Euryalean Scrub, and the almost total 

 absence of that most necessary article, water, added to which, 

 the debilitated state of the cattle from want of food, and the 

 rugged travelling they had undergone, induced Mr Oxley to 

 give up his intentions of reaching the south coast, and to 

 alter his course once more to the northward, with hopes of 

 again coming upon the Lachlan, or the swamps in which 

 they lost that river, and thus obtain a supply of water and 

 forage for their exhausted cattle. It w^as singularly unfor- 

 tunate that the arid state of the country compelled Mr Oxley 

 at this precise point to make a retrograde movement ; for at 

 the most southern point that the expedition reached in 

 S. lat. 3iP 15', they were not more than twenty miles from 

 the then unknown Morumbidgee River, which would to a 

 great extent have relieved their sufferings, supplied their 

 wants, and opened to them a new and interesting field of 

 discovery, that through the above circumstances was reserved 

 for another enterprising traveller, Captain Sturt, whose 

 entertaining volumes* contain so much of interest and 

 information on the interior of this singularly constructed 

 country. After wearisome travelling, and much suffering 

 both of man and beast for want of water ; on the 23d, they 

 once more came upon the Lachlan river, diminished to not 



* Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, during the 

 years 1828—31. By Captain C. Sturt, 39th Regiment, 2 vols. 8vo, 1833. 



