Exploration of Australia. 149 



encouraged by Sir Henry Young, the navigation of the Murray 

 stream has been achieved, and has, by the facilities which it offers 

 for a wider inland communication, conquered for settlement a 

 tract of country previously all but unavailable. Deprived of many 

 navigable streams of the interior, we may expect that also by a 

 railroad system vitality will be diffused in later days through 

 many of the dormant wastes of Australia. 



And lastly a noble zeal manifests itself all through this country 

 for a renewed endeavour to dissipate the doubts in which the 

 fate of Dr. Leichhardt's party has been involved for 

 nearly ten years, and the early appeal of Captain 

 Sturt, the venerable and the greatest of all Australian 

 explorers, to search with equal ardour for the wanderer 

 of the desert, as for the wanderer of the pole, raised a 

 renewed echo in many a feeling heart. However faint the hope 

 of finding any of Leichhardt's little band amongst the living, we 

 would, responding to the call, redeem our debt at least to their 

 memory. No one can more deeply deplore than myself, that it 

 has not been the destiny of the last Australian explorer to gain 

 any tidings of the missing party, although when crossing the 

 country between East Australia and the north coast, our hope of 

 learning of their fate was not less justified than ardent. 



But it would be needless to explain the necessity of unceasing 

 labours for a final and complete exploration of Australia. Yet 

 since it fell to my share to participate in the work of a former 

 expedition, I thought the Institute in fostering these projects, 

 might indulgently accept my own impressions, as to the best ac- 

 complishment of such a task. 



In order to obtain a clearer view of what remains to be 

 achieved yet by geographical research, a rapid glance will be 

 needed over the respective labours of those great men, to whom 

 not we alone, but the whole world of science is indebted for all 

 we know at present of the nature of Australia. 



But as the question brought before the Institute has reference 

 alone to inland exploration, I have excluded from this summary 

 all that relates exclusively to maritime survey, moreover since 

 an admirable memoir on the examination of our shores has been 

 furnished in the ever valuable work of Flinders, to which the 

 lucid notes of Count Strzelecki on King's and other navigator's 

 labours, may serve as a supplement. 



To Mr. Oxley's early labours (in 1817), I can but briefly 

 allude, containing only limited evidence for conclusion on the 

 nature of the interior. He extended the geographical survey 

 already in 1817 to the marshes of Macquarie and Lachlan, to 



