the Darling.  Unsatisfactory, however, as the discoveries may as yet be considered in a commercial point of view, the objects for which the expedition had been fitted out were happily attained.  The marsh it had been directed to examine, was traversed on every side, and the rivers it had been ordered to trace, were followed down to their terminations to a distance far beyond where they had ceased to exist as living streams.  To many who may cast their eyes over the accompanying chart, the extent of newly discovered country may appear trifling; but when they are told, that there is not a mile of that ground that was not traversed over and over again, either by Mr. Hume or by myself, that we wandered over upwards of 600 miles more than the main body of the expedition, on different occasions, in our constant and anxious search for water, and that we seldom dismounted from our horses, until long after sunset, they will acknowledge the difficulties with which we had to contend, and will make a generous allowance for them; for, however unsuccessful in some respects the expedition may have been, it accomplished as much, it is to be hoped, as under such trying circumstances could have been accomplished.  It now only remains for me to sum up the result of my own observations, and to point out to the reader, how far the actual state of the interior, has been found to correspond with the opinions that were entertained of it.

Mr. Oxley’s remarks.

I have already stated, in the introduction to this work, that the general impression on the minds of those best qualified to judge was, that the western streams discharged themselves into a central shoal sea.  Mr. Oxley thus expresses himself on the subject:—­

“July 3rd.  Towards morning the storm abated, and at day-light, we proceeded on our voyage.  The main bed of the river was much contracted, but very deep; the waters spreading to the depth of a foot or eighteen inches over the banks, but all running on the same point of bearing.  We met with considerable interruptions from fallen timber, which in places nearly choked up the channel.  After going about twenty miles, we lost the land and trees; the channel of the river, which lay through reeds, and was from one to three feet deep, ran northerly.—­This continued for three or four miles farther, when, although there had been no previous change in the breadth, depth, or rapidity of the stream for several miles, and I was sanguine in my expectations of soon entering the long-sought-for Australian sea, it all at once eluded our farther pursuit, by spreading on every point from N.W. to N.E. among the ocean of reeds which surrounded us, still running with the same rapidity as before.  There was no channel whatever among those reeds, and the depth varied from three to five feet.  This astonishing change (for I cannot call it a termination of the river) of course left me no alternative but to endeavour to return to some spot