uarie, until he supposed they ended in vast swamps or
marshes, and thereby founded the theory that in the centre of
Australia there existed a great inland sea. After Oxley came two
explorers named respectively Hovell and Hume, who penetrated, in 1824,
from the New South Wales settlements into what is now the colony of
Victoria. They discovered the upper portions of the River Murray,
which they crossed somewhere in the neighbourhood of the present town
of Albury. The river was then called the Hume, but it was subsequently
called the Murray by Captain Charles Sturt, who heads the list of
Australia's heroes with the title of The Father of Australian
Exploration.

In 1827 Sturt made one of the greatest discoveries of this century--or
at least one of the most useful for his countrymen--that of the River
Darling, the great western artery of the river system of New South
Wales, and what is now South-western Queensland. In another
expedition, in 1832, Sturt traced the Murrumbidgee River, discovered
by Oxley, in boats into what he called the Murray. This river is the
same found by Hovell and Hume, Sturt's name for it having been
adopted. He entered the new stream, which was lined on either bank by
troops of hostile natives, from whom he had many narrow escapes, and
found it trended for several hundreds of miles in a west-north-west
direction, confirming him in his idea of an inland sea; but at a
certain point, which he called the great north-west bend, it suddenly
turned south and forced its way to the sea at Encounter Bay, where
Flinders met Baudin in 1803. Neither of these explorers appear to have
discovered the river's mouth. On this occasion Sturt discovered the
province or colony of South Australia, which in 1837 was proclaimed by
the British Government, and in that colony Sturt afterwards made his
home.

Sturt's third and final expedition was from the colony of South
Australia into Central Australia, in 1843-1845. This was the first
truly Central Australian expedition that had yet been despatched,
although in 1841 Edward Eyre had attempted the same arduous
enterprise. Of this I shall write anon. On his third expedition Sturt
discovered the Barrier, the Grey, and the Stokes ranges, and among
numerous smaller watercourses he found and named Strezletki's,
Cooper's, and Eyre's Creeks. The latter remained the furthest known
inland water of Australia for many years after Sturt's return. Sturt
was accompanied, as surveyor and