358 AUSTRALIA : 



of such proof. Without reciting the names of the many 

 eminent travellers who have been engaged during the last 

 thirty years, officially or otherwise, in their arduous efforts 

 to reach the interior, we may state generally that, from what- 

 soever point of direction ingress has been attempted, a water- 

 less and barren desert has been eventually reached, frus- 

 trating all further advance. In this desert, entering it from 

 the east, we have cause to presume that Leichardt and his 

 companions perished. Of its boundary on this side we now 

 know more from the recent and remarkable journey of Mr. 

 Gregory ; who, going in search of Leichardt, traversed the 

 continent by the long inland line from Moreton Bay (now 

 the new colony of Queen's Land) to Adelaide, in South Aus- 

 tralia. This traveller had already gained reputation and the 

 gold medal of the Geographical Society for his eminent 

 services in the North Australian expedition of 1855, which, 

 entering the continent at the mouth of the Victoria Eiver, 

 proceeded to the S. and SW., until arrested, about 300 miles 

 from the coast, by the same wilderness which had already so 

 often baffled the enterprise of preceding travellers. 



Other physical proofs of the generally desert character of 

 this central region are afforded by the paucity and scanty 

 size of the Australian rivers, of which the Murray alone 

 seems fitted for continuous steam navigation ; and by those 

 dry, scorching and sandy winds, blowing from the interior, 

 which are so forcibly described by all recent colonists. The 

 suspicion of a great central lake, though it cannot actually 

 be disproved upon our present knowledge, yet is now enter- 

 tained by few. Many wide tracts of fertile country, profit- 

 able for settlement, will doubtless yet be found between the 

 desert and the sea ; of which the recent discoveries of Mr. 

 Stuart to the north-west of Lake Torrens furnish a fortunate 

 example. But taking its physical characters in their totality, 

 Australia seems destined to become a Coast Empire only; 



