There are several facts illustrative of the structure and lay, if I may use the expression, of the interior unfolded to us, in consequence of the farther knowledge Mr. Kennedy’s exploration has given of that part through which the Victoria flows, which strike myself, who have so deep an interest in the subject, when they might, perhaps, escape the general reader; I have therefore thought it right to advert to them for a moment.  He will not, however, have failed to observe, in the perusal of Mr. Kennedy’s Report, that excepting where small sandstone ranges turned it to the westward, the tendency of the Victoria was to the south.  The same fact struck me in reference to the Murray river, as I proceeded down it in 1830.  I could not fail to observe its efforts to run away in a southerly direction when not impeded by cliffs or sand-hills.  This would seem to indicate, that the dip of the continent is more directly to the south than to the west.  There is a line of rocky hills, that turn Cooper’s Creek to the latter point immediately to the south-west of the grassy plains on which I supposed it took its rise.  From that point its general direction is to the westward for about eighty miles, when it splits into two branches, the one flowing to the north-west, and terminating in the extensive grassy plains described at page 39, Vol.  II. of the present work, the other passing to the westward and laying all the country under water during the rainy season, which Mr. Brown and I traversed on our journey to the north-west; the several creeks we discovered on that occasion, being nothing more than ramifications of Cooper’s Creek, which thus, like all the other interior rivers of Australia, expends itself by overflowing extensive levels; but instead of forming marshes like the Lachlan, the Macquarie, and the Murrumbidgee, terminates in large grassy plains, which are as wheat-fields to the natives, since the grass-seed they collect from them appears to constitute their principal food.

I have observed in the beginning of this work, that the impression on my mind, before I commenced my recent expedition, was, that a great current had passed southwards through the Gulf of Carpentaria which had been split in two by some intervening obstacle, that one branch of this current had taken the line of the Darling, the other having passed to the westward.  Now, it would appear, that the sources of the Victoria are in long. 146 degrees 46 minutes, and we are aware, that the course of that river is to the W.S.W. as far as the 139th meridian; unless, therefore, there is a low and depressed country between the sources of the Victoria, and the coast ranges traversed by Dr. Leichhardt, through which the southerly current could have passed, my hypothesis, as regards it, is evidently wrong; and such, on an inspection of Sir Thomas Mitchell’s map, appears to be the case, as he has marked a line of hills, connecting the basins of the Victoria with the higher ranges traversed by