o Lord Stanley offering to
conduct an expedition into the heart of Australia. His offer was
accepted; and in May, 1844, a well-equipped party of sixteen persons was
ready to start from the banks of the Darling River. Places which Sturt
had explored sixteen years before, when they were a deep and unknown
solitude, were now covered with flocks and cattle; and he could use, as
the starting-place of this expedition, the farthest point he had reached
in that of 1828. Mr. Poole went with him as surveyor, Mr. Browne as
surgeon, and the draughtsman was Mr. J. M'Douall Stuart, who, in this
expedition, received a splendid training for his own great discoveries
of subsequent years. Following the Darling, they reached Laidley's
Ponds, passed near Lake Cawndilla, and then struck northward for the
interior. The country was very bare--one dead level of cheerless desert;
and when they reached a few hills which they called Stanley Range, now
better known as Barrier Range, Sturt, who ascended to one of the
summits, could see nothing hopeful in the prospect. How little did he
dream that the hills beneath him were full of silver, and that one day a
populous city of miners should occupy the waterless plain in front of
him! In this region he had to be very careful how he advanced, for he
had with him eleven horses, thirty bullocks, and two hundred sheep, and
water for so great a multitude could with difficulty be procured. He had
always to ride forward and find a creek or pond of sufficient size, as
the next place of encampment, before allowing the expedition to move on;
and, as water was often very difficult to find, his progress was but
slow. Fortunately for the party, it was the winter season, and a few of
the little creeks had a moderate supply of water. But after they had
reached a chain of hills, which Sturt called the Grey Range, the warm
season was already upon them. The summer of 1844 was one of the most
intense on record; and in these vast interior plains of sand, under the
fiery glare of the sun, the earth seemed to burn like plates of metal:
it split the hoofs of the horses; it scorched the shoes and the feet of
the men; it dried up the water from the creeks and pools, and left all
the country parched and full of cracks. Sturt spent a time of great
anxiety, for the streams around were rapidly disappearing; and, when all
the water had been dried up, the prospects of his party would, indeed,
be gloomy. His relief was therefore great