#6. Sturt.#--Two years after the return of Eyre, Captain Sturt, the famous discoverer of the Darling and Murray, wrote to Lord Stanley offering to conduct an expedition into the heart of Australia. His offer was accepted; and in May, 1844, a well-equipped party of sixteen persons was ready to start from the banks of the Darling River. Places which Sturt had explored sixteen years before, when they were a deep and unknown solitude, were now covered with flocks and cattle; and he could use, as the starting-place of this expedition, the farthest point he had reached in that of 1828. Mr. Poole went with him as surveyor, Mr. Browne as surgeon, and the draughtsman was Mr. J. M'Douall Stuart, who, in this expedition, received a splendid training for his own great discoveries of subsequent years. Following the Darling, they reached Laidley's Ponds, passed near Lake Cawndilla, and then struck northward for the interior. The country was very bare--one dead level of cheerless desert; and when they reached a few hills which they called Stanley Range, now better known as Barrier Range, Sturt, who ascended to one of the summits, could see nothing hopeful in the prospect. How little did he dream that the hills beneath him were full of silver, and that one day a populous city of miners should occupy the waterless plain in front of him! In this region he had to be very careful how he advanced, for he had with him eleven horses, thirty bullocks, and two hundred sheep, and water for so great a multitude could with difficulty be procured. He had always to ride forward and find a creek or pond of sufficient size, as the next place of encampment, before allowing the expedition to move on; and, as water was often very difficult to find, his progress was but slow. Fortunately for the party, it was the winter season, and a few of the little creeks had a moderate supply of water. But after they had reached a chain of hills, which Sturt called the Grey Range, the warm season was already upon them. The summer of 1844 was one of the most intense on record; and in these vast interior plains of sand, under the fiery glare of the sun, the earth seemed to burn like plates of metal: it split the hoofs of the horses; it scorched the shoes and the feet of the men; it dried up the water from the creeks and pools, and left all the country parched and full of cracks. Sturt spent a time of great anxiety, for the streams around were rapidly disappearing; and, when all the water had been dried up, the prospects of his party would, indeed, be gloomy. His relief was therefore great when Mr. Poole found a creek in a rocky basin, whose waters seemed to have a perennial flow. Sturt moved forward, and formed his depot beside the stream; and here he was forced to remain for six weeks. For it appeared as though he had entered a trap; the country before him was absolutely without water, so that he could not advance; while the creeks behind him were now only dry