By 6th January the boat was ready and Sturt started on his memorable voyage. After passing the junction of the Lachlan, the channel gradually narrowed; great trees had been swept down by the floods and navigation rendered very dangerous. Still narrower grew the stream, stronger the current. "On a sudden, the river took a general southern direction. We were carried at a fearful rate down its gloomy banks, and at such a moment of excitement had little time to pay attention to the country through which we were passing. At last we found we were approaching a junction, and within less than a minute we were hurried into a broad and noble river. It is impossible to describe the effect upon us of so instantaneous a change. We gazed in silent wonder on the large channel we had entered." The Murrumbidgee had joined the great Murray River as Sturt now called it, after Sir George Murray of the Colonial Department. To add to the unknown dangers of the way, numbers of natives now appeared in force on the banks of the river, threatening the white men with "dreadful yells and with the beating of spears and shields." Firearms alone saved the little crew, and the rage of the natives was turned to admiration as they watched the white men paddling on their great river while some seventy black men swam off to the boat like "a parcel of seals." The explorers now found a new and beautiful stream flowing into the Murray from the north, up which the boat was now turned, natives anxiously following along the grassy banks, till suddenly a net stretched across the stream checked their course. Sturt instinctively felt he was on the river Darling again. "I directed that the Union Jack should be hoisted, and we all stood up in the boat and gave three distinct cheers. The eye of every native was fixed upon that beautiful flag as it waved over us in the heart of a desert." While they were still watching, Sturt turned the head of the boat and pursued his way down the great Murray River. Stormy weather at the end of January set in; though they were yet one hundred and fifteen miles from the coast, the river increased in breadth, cliffs towered above them, and the water dashed like sea-waves at their base.