158 An Historical Review of the 



part of Lake Torrens, and his companion Mr. Browne, in a 



letter to myself, affirms again after the late discovery of fresh 

 water in the Torrens Basin, that it was where they tasted it in- 

 disputably salt. Stmt's brave associate, Mr. Poole, fell on 

 this lonely spot a victim of the scurvy. At last released by 

 rain, Captain Sturt and Mr. Brown proceeded in August 1845, 

 to the N.W., and encountered all the singular phenomena 

 of the desert ; low hills raised to gigantic mountains by refrac- 

 tion, the deceptive mirage, the extraordinary changes of the tem- 

 perature from burning heat at day time to freezing cold at night. 

 He proved by a gallant dash into the interior, worthy to have been 

 crowned with an equally brilliant success, the non-existence of 

 high ranges north of Lake Torrens for at least 300 miles, traver- 

 sing nothing but a seemingly endless desert, which in its more 

 depressed places appeared bike a dry recess of the sea. From 

 sand ridges, like the waves of the ocean in endless succession, 

 interspersed with salt lakes, he returned from his most northern 

 position, within one degree of the tropics, two long days journey 

 away from the last water, without any prospect of finding it by 

 further advance. 



Still the desert with all its horrors could not deter the intrepid 

 Sturt from a new attempt of reaching the centre of the conti- 

 nent. Travelling in October, somewhat to the eastward of his 

 last track, he was fortunate enough to intersect the channels 

 which radiate from Cooper's Creek, a delightful oasis in the 

 desert, formed by the drainage of the country declining to the 

 south-west. This watercourse has bye-channels, like most of 

 the North Australian Bivers, and is likewise lined with arbore- 

 scent melaleucas. Some of the pools were salt. Beyond it only 

 saltlakes and arid country occurred, the shallow stony desert 

 intercepting his progress. "From the last sandhill his eye 

 wandered hopelessly for some bright object on which to rest : 

 the appearance of the desert was that of an immense sea beach." 

 Returning along his track guided by a lamp at night, he accom- 

 plished his journey back to Cooper's Creek (92 miles), receiving 

 relief of thirst only by one of his wells ; had this failed to supply 

 the element of life, the destruction of the horses would have also 

 sealed the dreadful fate of the explorers. 



Captain Sturt is of opinion that the fall of the sub-tropical inte- 

 rior is to the westward, and that large tracts of it are occasionally 

 inundated, bringing fish to the isolated parts of such waters as 

 O'Halloran Creek. Disappointed in all his hopes, prostrated by 

 scurvy, and seemingly cut off again by the dryness of the season 

 from his retreat to the Darling, a distance of 270 miles ; it 



