Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia and Overland from Adelaide to King George's Sound in the Years 1840-1: Sent By the Colonists of South Australia, with the Sanction and Support of the Government: Including an Account of the Manners and Customs of the Aborigines and the State of Their Relations with Europeans — Volume 02Eyre, Edward John
History
Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia and Overland from Adelaide to King George's Sound in the Years 1840-1: Sent By the Colonists of South Australia, with the Sanction and Support of the Government: Including an Account of the Manners and Customs of the Aborigines and the State of Their Relations with Europeans — Volume 02
Eyre, Edward John
Australia -- Discovery and exploration; Ethnology -- Australia
Entertaining, as I do, the highest respect for the opinion of one so
every way capable of forming a correct judgment as Captain Sturt, it is
with considerable diffidence that I advance any conjectures in opposition
to his, and especially so, as I may be thought presumptuous in doing so
in the face of the accounts received. Until these accounts, however, are
further confirmed, the question still remains as it was; and it may
perhaps not be out of place to allude to some of the reasons which have
led me to form an opinion somewhat different from that entertained by
Captain Sturt, and which I have been compelled to arrive at after a long
personal experience, a closer approach to the interior, and a more
extensive personal examination of the continent, than any other traveller
has hitherto made. In the course of that experience, I have never met
with the slightest circumstance to lead me to imagine that there should
be an inland sea, still less a deep navigable one, and having an outer
communication with the ocean. I can readily suppose, and, in fact, I do
so believe, that a considerable portion of the interior consists of the
beds or basins of salt lakes or swamps, as Lake Torrens, and some of
which might be of great extent. I think, also, that these alternate, with
sandy deserts, and that probably at intervals, there are many isolated
ranges, like the Gawler range, and which, perhaps, even in some places
may form a connection of links across the continent, could any favourable
point be obtained for commencing the examination.
It is very possible that among these ranges, intervals of a better or
even of a rich and fertile country might be met with.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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