B. Herschel Babbage was the eldest son of the well-known inventor of the calculating machine.  He had been educated as an engineer, and for a considerable time had followed his profession in Europe.  He had been engaged on several main lines in England, and had worked in conjunction with the celebrated Brunel.  He had also been commissioned by the Government of Piedmont to report on a line across the Alps by way of Mount Cenis.  He had remained in Italy some years until his work was interrupted by the revolution.  He had returned to England, and had subsequently come to South Australia in 1851, in the ship Hydaspes.  He died at his residence, in 1878, at St. Mary’s, South Road, where he had a vineyard.

13.2.  John MCDOUALL Stuart.

[Illustration.  John McDouall Stuart.]

John McDouall Stuart, the great explorer of the centre of Australia, arrived in South Australia in 1839.  His first experience of Australian exploration was sufficiently trying, gained as it was when he was acting as a draughtsman with Captain Sturt on his last arduous expedition.  But it had kindled in him a high ardour for discovery, and fostered a stubborn resolution to carry through whatever he undertook.

He commenced his early explorations when in a position to do so independently, to the north-west of Swinden’s country, in search of some locality called by the natives Wingillpin.  Not finding it, he came to the strange conclusion that Wingillpin and Cooper’s Creek were one and the same, although he was now on a different watershed.  He also, at that period, seems to have entertained somewhat extensive notions of the course of Cooper’s Creek, as in one part of his Journal he remarks:—­

“My only hope of cutting Cooper’s Creek is on the other side of the range.  The plain we crossed to-day resembles those of the Cooper, also the grasses.  If it is not there, it must run to the north-west, and form the Glenelg of Captain Grey.”

Now, although we know that Grey held rather extravagant notions of the importance of the Glenelg, even he would not have thought it possible for the Glenelg to be the outlet of such a mighty river as Cooper’s Creek would have become by the time it reached the north-west coast.

Stuart’s horses were now too footsore to proceed over the stony country he found himself then in, and he had no spare shoes with him.  Failing therefore to find the promised land of Wingillpin, although he had passed over much good and well-watered country, he turned to the south-west, and made some explorations in the neighbourhood of Lake Gairdner.  Before this, however, he had found and named Chambers Creek.  From Lake Gairdner, he steered for Fowler’s Bay, and his description of some of the country he passed is anything but inviting.  From a spur of the high peak that he named Mount Finke, he saw:—­

“A prospect gloomy in the extreme:  I could see a long distance, but nothing met the eye save a dense scrub, as black and dismal as night.”