In 1858 a new aspirant for geographical honours appeared on the field in the person of John McDouall Stuart, of South Australia, who, as before mentioned, had formerly been a member of Captain Sturt’s Central Australian expedition in 1843-5 as draftsman and surveyor.  Stuart’s object was to cross the continent, almost in its greatest width, from south to north; and this he eventually accomplished.  After three attempts he finally reached the north coast in 1862, his rival Burke having been the first to do so.  Stuart might have been first, but he seems to have under-valued his rival, and wasted time in returning and refitting when he might have performed the feat in two if not one journey; for he discovered a well-watered country the whole way, and his route is now mainly the South Australian Transcontinental Telegraph Line, though it must be remembered that Stuart had something like fifteen hundred miles of unknown country in front of him to explore, while Burke and Wills had scarcely six.  Stuart also conducted some minor explorations before he undertook his greater one.  He and McKinlay were South Australia’s heroes, and are still venerated there accordingly.  He died in England not long after the completion of his last expedition.

We now come to probably the most melancholy episode in the long history of Australian exploration, relating to the fate of Burke and Wills.  The people and Government of the colony of Victoria determined to despatch an expedition to explore Central Australia, from Sturt’s Eyre’s Creek to the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria at the mouth of the Albert River of Stokes’s, a distance in a straight line of not more than six hundred miles; and as everything that Victoria undertakes must always be on the grandest scale, so was this.  One colonist gave 1000 pounds; 4000 pounds more was subscribed, and then the Government took the matter in hand to fit out the Victorian Exploring Expedition.  Camels were specially imported from India, and everything was done to ensure success; when I say everything, I mean all but the principal thing—­the leader was the wrong man.  He knew nothing of bush life or bushmanship, navigation, or any art of travel.  Robert O’Hara Burke was brave, no doubt, but so hopelessly ignorant of what he was undertaking, that it would have been the greatest wonder if he had returned alive to civilisation.  He was accompanied by a young man named Wills as surveyor and observer; he alone kept a diary, and from his own statements therein he was frequently more than a hundred miles out of his reckoning.  That, however, did not cause his or Burke’s death; what really did so was bad management.  The money this expedition cost, variously estimated at from 40,000 to 60,000 pounds, was almost thrown away, for the map of the route of the expedition was incorrect and unreliable, and Wills’s journal of no geographical value, except that it showed they had no difficulty with regard to water.  The expedition was, however,