6. News of the bright prospects of the colony reached England in the nick of time, when the end of the long war with France threw thousands of soldiers, sailors, and workmen out of employment. A stream of emigrants soon began to flow into Australia and to clamour for gifts of land. From this time the colony began to prosper. The work of exploration went steadily on. Little by little it became clear that behind the mountain-range that skirts the east and south-east coasts, there stretched far into the interior vast plains capable of feeding countless flocks, where now millions of sheep furnish wool for the looms of our manufacturers. 7. Many years passed before any explorer came upon an important river. There is, in fact, but one really fine river in Australia, and that is the Murray, which was discovered, in 1830, by Captain Sturt. Sailing down the Murrumbidgee, he found the river take a sudden turn to the south. "We were carried," he writes, "at a fearful rate down between its glowing and contracted banks.... At last we found we were approaching a junction, and all of a sudden we were hurried into a broad and noble river." It was the Murray, and Sturt endeavoured to follow the river to its mouth, which proved to be a distance of a thousand miles. 8. The natives as a rule were few in number, weak, timid, and harmless; but on this occasion they gathered, to the number of six hundred, in a well-chosen position on a shallow reach of the river to dispute its passage, and made their intention clear by yelling and brandishing spears. "As we neared the sandbank," Captain Sturt relates, "I stood up and made signs to the natives to desist, but without success. I took up my gun, therefore, and cocking it, had already brought it to the level. A few seconds more would have closed the life of the nearest savage, for I was determined to take deadly aim, in the hope that the fall of one man might save the lives of many. But, at the very moment when my hand was on the trigger, my purpose was checked by my companion, who directed my attention to another party of blacks on the left bank of the river."