with water they formerly separated the islands. This hypothesis,
if I may so call it, was based on observations which, however erroneous
they may appear to be, were made with an earnest desire on my part to
throw some light on the apparently anomalous structure of the Australian
interior. No one could have watched the changes of the country through
which he passed, with more attention than did I--not only from a natural
curiosity, but from an anxious desire to acquit myself to the
satisfaction of the Government by which I was employed.

When Mr. Oxley, the first Surveyor-General of New South Wales, a man of
acknowledged ability and merit, pushed his investigations into the
interior of that country, by tracing down the rivers Lachlan and
Macquarie, he was checked in his progress westward by marshes of great
extent, beyond which he could not see any land. He was therefore led to
infer that the interior, to a certain extent, was occupied by a shoal
sea, of which the marshes were the borders, and into which the rivers he
had been tracing discharged themselves.

My friend, Mr. Allan Cunningham, who was for several years resident in
New South Wales, and who made frequent journeys into the interior of the
continent as botanist to his late Majesty King George IV. and who also
accompanied Captain P. P. King, during his survey of its intertropical
regions, if he did not accompany Mr. Oxley also on one of his
expeditions, strongly advocated the hypothesis of that last-mentioned
officer; but as Mr. Cunningham kept on high ground on his subsequent
excursions, he could not on such occasions form a correct opinion as to
the nature of the country below him. His impressions were however much
influenced by the observations made by Captain King in Cambridge Gulf,
the water of which was so much discoloured, as to lead that intelligent
and careful officer to conclude, that it might prove to be the outlet of
the waters of the interior, and hence a strong opinion obtained, that the
dip of the continent was in the direction of that great inlet, or to the
W. N. W. I therefore commenced my investigations, under an impression
that I should be led to that point, in tracing down any river I might
discover, and that sooner or later I should be stopped by a large body of
inland waters. I descended rapidly from the Blue Mountains, into a level
and depressed interior, so level indeed, that an altitude of the sun,
taken on the horizon, on several occas