134 
CONCLUDING REMARKS. 
place to allude to some of the reasons which have 
led me to form an opinion somewhat different from 
that entertained by Captain Sturt, and which I have 
been compelled to arrive at after a long personal 
experience, a closer approach to the interior, and 
a more extensive personal examination of the 
continent, than any other traveller has hitherto 
made. In the course of that experience, I have 
never met with the slightest circumstance to lead 
me to imagine that there should be an inland sea, 
still less a deep navigable one, and having an outer 
communication with the ocean. I can readily sup- 
pose, and, in fact, I do so believe, that a considera- 
ble portion of the interior consists of the beds or 
basins of salt lakes or swamps, as Lake Torrens, and 
some of which might be of great extent. I think, 
also, that these alternate, with sandy deserts, and 
that probably at intervals, there are many isolated 
ranges, like the Gawler range, and which, perhaps, 
even in some places may form a connection of links 
across the continent, could any favourable point be 
obtained for commencing the examination. 
It is very possible that among these ranges, inter- 
vals of a better or even of a rich and fertile country 
might be met with. 
The suggestion thrown out by Captain Sturt a 
few years ago, that Australia might formerly have 
been an Archipelago of islands, appears to me to 
have been a happy idea, and to afford the most 
rational and satisfactory way of accounting for many 
