them the position we were
placed in, and the chance on which our safety would depend if we went on.
They might well have been excused if they expressed an opinion contrary
to such a course; but the only reply they made me was to assure me that
they were ready and willing to follow me to the last."

With much reluctance, however, Captain Sturt determined to return to
Cooper Creek without delay. They travelled night and day without
interruption, and on the morning of their arrival at the creek, one of
those terrible hot north winds, so much dreaded by the colonists, began
to blow with unusual violence. Lucky was it for them that it had not
overtaken them in the Desert, for they could scarcely have survived it.
The heat was awful; a thermometer, graduated to 127 degrees, burst,
though sheltered in the fork of a large tree, and their skin was
blistered by a torrent of fine sand, which was driven along by the fury
of the hurricane. They still had fearful difficulties to encounter, but
after an absence of nineteen months they returned safely to Adelaide.

The discouraging account of the interior which was brought by Captain
Sturt did not prevent other explorers from making further attempts; but
the terrible fate of Kennedy and his party on York Peninsula, and the
utter disappearance of Leichardt's expedition, both in the same year
(1848), had a very decided influence in checking the progress of
Australian exploration. Seven years later, in 1855, Mr. Gregory landed on
the north-west coast for the purpose of exploring the Victoria River, and
after penetrating as far south as latitude 20 degrees 16 minutes,
longitude 131 degrees 44 minutes, he was compelled to proceed to the head
of the Gulf of Carpentaria, and thence to Sydney along the route taken by
Dr. Leichardt in 1844. Shortly after his return Mr. Gregory was
despatched by the Government of New South Wales in 1857, to find, if
possible, some trace of the lost expedition of the lamented Leichardt;
his efforts, however, did nothing to clear up the mystery that enshrouds
the fate of that celebrated explorer.* (* It is possible that Mr.
McKinlay has been hasty in the opinion he formed from the graves and
remains of white men shown to him by Keri Keri, and the story related of
their massacre. May they not belong to Leichardt's party?)

The colonists of South Australia have always been distinguished for
promoting by private aid and public grant the cause of exploration. They
u