iS3 AUSTRALIAN PICTURES. 



More than six years elapsed before Flinders was released ; and, upon 

 reaching England, he found that the discoveries he intended to announce 

 had been given to the world, and that the public was familiar with them. 

 Exposure, hardships, and, above all, the long weary years in the French 

 prison, had all told upon him. He set to work to bring out his book and 

 his charts, and just managed to complete his task, but sank immediately 

 afterwards. It is a mournful chapter. But the fame of Flinders survives 

 and is growing. In Australian annals no name is more justly honoured. 



Very soon the colonists began to push inland from their settlements on 

 the coast, feeling their way, and gradually becoming acquainted with the 

 novel features of their new abode. There was great joy when, after many 

 endeavours, a Sydney party discovered a pass through the extraordinary 

 precipices of the Blue Mountains, which had long hemmed in the infant 

 colony. The adventures of Oxley, who thought that he was stopped by an 

 inland sea, of Sturt, who nearly perished in the Central Desert, and of 

 Mitchell, who opened up the Western District of Victoria, have already been 

 incidentally mentioned in these pages. 



One of the first efforts to reach the centre of the continent was made 

 by Edward John Eyre, in after-days Governor of Jamaica. He left 

 Adelaide in 1840, his party consisting of five Europeans and three natives, 

 with thirteen horses. But the year was one of drought. The great marsh, 

 now called Lake Torrens, was a sheet of glittering salt. The horses broke 

 through the crust, and a hideous and tenacious black mud oozed out. 

 Advance on this line was impossible ; and, upon taking a more westerly 

 route, the explorer was stopped by the still larger marsh now called Lake 

 Eyre, which was also a deceptive sheet of salt. Disappointed, Eyre returned 

 to the head of Spencer's Gulf, and decided to make a dash at Western 

 Australia, following the line of the cliffs in order to intercept any rivers. 

 Alas, there were none to intercept ! The party had to depend for sub- 

 sistence upon the chance of finding water-holes not dried up, and the little 

 clay pans formed by the aborigines, and called native wells. 



At an early stage Eyre sent all his party back, except his overseer 

 Baxter, his black boy Wylie, and two natives. The farther he went the 

 more sterile the country became, and the worse was his position. The 

 burning sand suffocated the travellers, and day after day passed without 

 water. Most of the horses died. Eyre was watching the remnant feeding 

 on some scanty vegetation one night, and was musing on his gloomy 

 prospects, when he heard a musket shot. The two natives had murdered 

 the overseer, decamped with the stores, and left Eyre and his boy Wylie to 

 their fate ! The night was dark, and Eyre gives a vivid description of his 

 feelings as he sat in the gloom by the side of the corpse of his friend, ex- 

 pecting every moment that the treacherous blacks would use their muskets 

 upon him and Wylie. He could not bury the body, for the ground was 



