COURSE OF THE UARLING. 
159 
the hopes of any river reaching from one extremity of it to 
the other. A variety of local circumstances, as the con- 
traction of a channel, a shoal sea, or numerous islands, in- 
fluence currents generally, hut more especially round so 
extensive a continent as that of which we are treating ; nor 
does it strike me that any observations made by Capt. King 
during his survey, can be held to bear any connection with 
the eastern ranges, or their western waters. It may, how- 
however, be said, that as the course of the Darling is still 
involved in uncertainty, the question remains undecided ; 
but it appears to me, the discovery of that river has set aside 
every conjecture (founded on previous obsei’vation) respect- 
ing the main features of the interior lying to the westward 
of the Blue Mountains. Both Mr. Oxley and Mr. Cun- 
ningham drew their conclusions from the appearances of 
the country they severally explored. The ground on which 
those theories were built, has been travelled over, and has 
not been found to realize them, but subsequent investigation 
has discovered to us a river, the dip of whose bed is to the 
S.W. We have every reason to believe that the sources of 
this river must be far to the northward of the most distant 
northerly point to which any survey has been made, as we 
are certain that it is far beyond the stretch of vision from 
the loftiest and most westerly of the barrier ranges ; from 
which circumstance, it is evident that whatever disposition 
the streams descending from those ranges to the westward 
may shew to hold a N.W. course more immediately at the 
base, the whole of the interior streams, from the Macquarie 
