ACROSS THE AUSTRALIAN CONTINENT. 237 



River, which flows into the Gulf of Carpentaria. Their goal was 

 reached, and the problem of a connecting route between north and 

 south successfully solved. 



The vast Australian solitudes hitherto traversed had presented 

 every variety of aspect, from the stony plateaux and the watery 

 sands where the rivers can keep no regular channel, and where wide 

 spaces of dry bare ground separate great shallows of brackish water, 

 to finely irrigated plains, clothed with herbs or bushes, and promising 

 abundant resources for future colonists. Meteorological phenomena 

 present in these regions the greatest uncertainties: either the dry 

 season is so protracted as to ruin all vegetation, or the rains so 

 thoroughly deluge the soil as by a contrary cause to ensure the same 

 result. These climatic contradictions explain the variations observable 

 in the narratives of the different travellers who have visited the 

 interior. One point, however, is beyond all doubt; the hopeless 

 sterility of Nuyts Land, that immense sandy tract which, over an 

 extent as yet unknown, is regarded as impassable, and stretches along 

 the southern coast between Spencer Gulf and King George Harbour. 

 As before said, the primary cause of the barrenness of Central Aus- 

 tralia is the lack of water running water and rain water. Yet the 

 most sterile portions lie far nearer the coast than was formerly 

 credited; and monotonous as may be the descriptions of explorers, so 

 far as the landscapes of Central Australia are concerned, we may 

 from to-day consider that, with the exception of certain points, no 

 obstacles exist sufficiently powerful to arrest the expansion of 

 European colonization, in a country especially where cattle-breed- 

 ing is the principal industry, and the one which takes precedence of 

 all others. 



The chief difficulty encountered by each exploring party has 

 been the penury of natural products of the soil adapted for human 

 food. The traveler is compelled to carry with him a sufficiency of 

 provisions to last him from his departure until his return. It was 

 this insufficiency of rations which wrought the fatal denouement of 

 the glorious enterprise of Burke and Wills. 



