itting their
desperate fortunes to the stream, and trusting to make the coast
somewhere, and leaving their return in the hands of Providence.

The more one regards this heroic venture, the more sublime does it
appear. The whole of the interior was then a sealed book, and the river,
for aught Sturt knew, might flow throughout the length of the continent.
But the voyage was commenced with cool and calm confidence.

In a week the whaleboat was put together, and a small skiff also built.
Six hands were selected for the crew, and the remainder, after waiting
one week in case of accident, were to return to Goulburn Plains and there
await events. It would be as well to embody here the names of this band.
John Harris, Hopkinson, and Fraser were the soldiers chosen, and Clayton,
Mulholland, and Macmanee the prisoners. The start was made at seven on
the morning of January 7th, the whale-boat towing the small skiff. Within
about fifteen miles of the point of embarkation they passed the junction
of the Lachlan, and that night camped amongst a thicket of reeds. The
next day the skiff fouled a log and sank, and though it was raised to the
surface and most of the contents recovered, the bulk of them was much
damaged. Fallen and sunken logs greatly endangered their progress, but on
the 14th they "were hurried into a broad and noble river." Such was the
force with which they were shot out of the Murrumbidgee that they were
carried nearly to the opposite bank of the new and ample stream. Sturt's
feelings at that moment were to be envied, and for once in a life
chequered with much disappointment he must have felt that a great reward
was granted to him in this crowning discovery. He named the new river the
Murray, after Sir George Murray, the head of the Colonial Department. As
some controversy has of late arisen as to the question of Sturt's right
to confer the name, we here quote his own words, written after surveying
the Hume in 1838.

"When I named the Murray I was in a great measure ignorant of the other
rivers with which it is connected...I want not to usurp an inch of ground
or of water over which I have not passed."

On the bosom of the Murray they could now make use of their sail, which
the contracted space in the bed of the Murrumbidgee had before prevented
them from doing. The aborigines were seen nearly every day, and once when
the voyagers had to negotiate a very ticklish rapid, some of them
approached quite close, and seem