Day after day the boat, with its adventurous crew, glided down the united stream of the Murray and the Darling. Sometimes they passed over wide and long reaches, stretching out for many miles, but occasionally, too, much difficulty was experienced in clearing the rapids. For a considerable part of the course the banks were high and steep, but usually picturesque. The country, so far as could be judged from a passing boat, was mostly of the poorest quality, offering scarcely a patch likely to reward the labour of the farmer. In one respect Sturt was the most unfortunate of the explorers. From first to last he hardly ever had the good luck to hit upon a large tract of fine country, the Alexandrina district excepted. His mission seemed to be the discovery of deserts, and of these he made known more than enough to give Australia a bad name. Such being Sturt's ill-fortune, it is not surprising to find him indulging in gloomy views regarding the great interior; but even in these forebodings he fell short of Oxley, who was quite a Cassandra in his way. In the introduction to his narrative the Captain tries to account for the predominance of poor land in this outlying region of the world, and is inclined to attribute it to the want of decaying vegetable matter, as the trees seldom shed their leaves, and the little that is supplied from this or other sources being usually destroyed by bush fires. But Australia is not the desert land which Sturt imagined, or even portrayed, as will be seen further on. Its richest lands were yet locked up, and this same explorer was unconsciously preparing the key by which they were to be opened to private enterprise and the public benefit. Between the entrance of the Darling and what is now known as the Great Bend an important tributary was observed to fall in from either side. The one from the north Sturt called the Rufus, in honour of Mr. George Macleay, the second on the expedition. Probably the reader fails to perceive the point of the compliment. It lies just here: Mr. Macleay possessed a splendid head of red hair, and _rufus_ being the Latin for red, down it went for the name of the river. The Captain, notwithstanding his sombre tinge, must have had a quiet vein of humour in his composition. The other tributary was called the Lindsay, after a gentleman of that name who was then Acting-Governor of the colony. On gaining the lower reaches of the Murray it was observed to widen rapidly, and at the 35° 15' of S. latitude expanded into a magnificent lake 60 miles long and 50 in width, which was named Alexandrina, in honour of the young princess, who soon after became Queen Victoria. When the far end of the lake had been reached, persistent but unavailing attempts were made to get the boat to sea. Before leaving Sydney it had been arranged to send a small vessel to St. Vincent Gulf to wait for the expedition, that being the most likely quarter for it to turn up if its