CII. I.] PLAN* OF EXPLORATION. 3 



me, as successor to Mr. Oxley, at once accepted my proffered 

 services to conduct a party into the interior. 



The principal object of my plan was the exploration of 

 Australia, so that whether the report of the river proved 

 true or false, the results of the expedition would be, at least, 

 useful, in affording so much additional information ; equally 

 important geographically, whether positive or negative. 



After I had surveyed extensive tracts of territory, I never 

 could separate the question respecting the course of any 

 river, from that of the situation of the hig-her land necessarv 

 to furnish its sources and confine its basin. I could not 

 entertain the idea of a river distinct from these conditions, 

 so necessary to the existence of one — and it appeared to me 

 that if a large river flowed to the north-west of any point 

 north of Liverpool plains — its sources could only be sought 

 for in the Coast Range in the opposite direction ; or to the 

 eastward of these plains. 



Various rivers were known to arise on that side of the 

 Coast Range; the streams from Liverpool plains flowing- 

 northward ; the Peel, the Gwydii-, and the Dumaresq, 

 arising in the Coast Range, and falling, as had been repre- 

 sented, to the north-westward. I proposed, therefore, to 

 proceed northward, or to pursue such a direction as well as 

 the nature of the country permitted, so that I might arrive, 

 on the most northern of these streams, and then, keeping in 

 view whatever high land might be visible near its northern 

 banks, to trace the river's course downwards, and thus to 

 arrive at the "large river," or common channel of all these 

 waters. 



The second condition necessary to the existence of a river, 

 namely, the higher land enclosing its basin, might, in this 

 case, have been either Arbuthnot's Range, or that between 

 the Darling and the Lachlan ; and this seemed to me to 

 involve a question of at least equal importance to that of the 

 river itself, for, had the fall of all the waters above mentioned, 

 been to the north-west, it was obvious that such a range 



B 2 



