192 
RECENT AUSTRALIAN EXPLORATIONS. [March 22, 1858. 
Australia, and such, I take it, is the character of the land which Mr. Goyder 
and Captain Freeling saw near Lake Torrens. The water in the lake must be 
acted upon by the same circumstances. After the autumnal rains the fresh 
water would be abundant, as the fresh water in the Torrens river at Adelaide 
is abundant ; and after three months’ drought the lake will he almost dry, the 
same as the river at Adelaide is. This being the character of the country, I 
am sure that Captain Freeling’s account does not sweep away Mr. Goyder’s. 
The people in Adelaide say, and I think every one who has been in South 
Australia will say, that you must take the medium between the two. There 
is good land, but it must be occupied and turned to advantage. That brick- 
field-looking land at Adelaide, which is so burned up after a drought, is the 
finest corn country in the world. I doubt not there is profitable land near 
Lake Torrens, and that there exists some marvellous phenomenon which fills 
that lake with such an abundance of fresh water, coming down probably by 
Captain Sturt’s enormous watercourse, thirty miles wide. 
However, that is not the great point at issue : whether there is to the west- 
ward of Lake Torrens a way into the interior — that is the great point with 
which we have to do. I have always strongly had the impression that there is 
a way, and this is my great reason for thinking so : When, in Adelaide, the 
wind went round from the north to the east, the sky became lurid and dry 
and parched, and those hot winds came of which we have heard so much in 
Australia. When the wind began to go to the westward of north, it became 
cloudy and cool and moist. By careful inquiry, I found the same was experi- 
enced by the settlers in the Port Lincoln peninsula : they never knew of a hot 
wind from the north. The people of Adelaide never knew of a hot wind from 
the north-west; and Mr. Eyre, when he went into the region to the westward 
of the Port Lincoln peninsula, speaks of the JST.E. wind coming from the north 
of Port Lincoln as never being anything but moist and cloudy (Yol. i. 343 ; 
ii. 140 and 143) ; whereas a little farther to the eastward the wind was 
always terrifically hot. This wind came from that desert to the east of Lake 
Torrens, in which Sturt’s thermometer blew up — a desert on which, long 
before he went there, I had put a cross, and said, “ A burning desert, the 
source of the hot winds at Sydney and at Adelaide.” My conclusion having 
come out so clearly as regards the eastward, I fully 'expect that with respect 
to the westward will be equally borne out by the result, and that there will 
be found — as has recently begun to be found by Mr. Hack, Mr. Swindon, and 
others, a well- watered country to the westward of Lake' Torrens and to the 
northward of the Port Lincoln peninsula. I think we have sober reason for 
expecting that that good and well- watered country will be found to be formed 
bv a great drainage coming down from the north and west into Lake Torrens, 
fed by the evaporation of the Southern Ocean continually blown upon it, and 
by the tropical rains from the north. I was so anxious that Mr. Eyre should 
take that direction that I pressed him almost unreasonably to it ; but his 
heart, rendered hopeless by Lake Torrens, was then set on the Swan River, 
and he took that ever-memorable tremendous journey — a journey which I 
believe will yet produce great results. I am delighted that the South Aus- 
tralians have taken up the matter in really good earnest. So convinced were 
they by the reports that came from Mr. Swindon and Mr. Thomson and 
others, that the run upon the Government Land Office for leases in that direc- 
tion was so great that the Government got alarmed and stopped issues. 
They have now begun again, and there can be no doubt at all that there is a 
large quantity of good land in that direction. 
There is another point upon which Mr. Hack speaks steadily, and that is 
that the natives assert that between Lake Gairdner and Lake Torrens there is 
a route into the great interior. That is a point likewise of immense import- 
ance to us. Any one who will look over Mr. Eyre’s travels will perceive that 
