Sturt, when he had progressed for a while southwards, must have begun to perceive that that surmise as to a great inland sea was incorrect. For the waters both of the Murrumbidgee and the Darling he had so far accounted, and he was now taking with him down to the Southern Ocean the confluence of the three rivers. It is not my purpose in this book to describe the explorations of Australia, and I will not therefore stop to dwell upon the dangers which Sturt encountered. But it should be remembered that he was forced to carry with him all the provisions for his party, that he had no guide except the course of the waters which he was bound to follow, and that as he went he was accompanied along the banks by tribes of black natives, who, if not absolutely hostile, were astonished, suspicious, and irascible. Why they did not surround and destroy him and his little party we can hardly conceive. As far as we yet know, no white man had been there before, and yet it appears from Sturt’s account that the natives frequently evinced no astonishment whatever at firearms, looking on while birds were shot, and not even condescending to admire the precision with which they were killed. He went on southwards till he entered a big lake,--now called Lake Alexandrina. There are indeed a succession of lakes or inland waters here, of which Lakes Alexandrina and Albert are very shallow, rarely having as much as six feet of water, which is fresh or very nearly fresh,--and the Coorong River, which is salt, and, although as much within the mouth as are the lakes, must be regarded as an inlet of the sea. Of Lake Albert and the Coorong River, Sturt appears to have seen nothing, but he did make his way with extreme difficulty through the tortuous, narrow, and shallow opening of the river which takes the waters of the lake down to the sea in Encounter Bay,--and then perceived that for purposes of seaborne navigation the great river of which he had followed the course must always be useless. “Thus,” he says, “were our fears of the impracticability and inutility of the chain of communication between the lake and the ocean confirmed.”