But, though baffled and unable to win the goal he strove for, never did man better deserve success. The instructions that he received from the Home Office were, to reach the centre of the continent, to discover whether mountains or sea existed there, and, if the former, to note the flow and direction of the northern waters, but on no account to follow them down to the north coast. Sturt was instructed to proceed by Mount Arden, a route already tried, condemned, and abandoned by Eyre; and he elected to proceed by way of the Darling. His plan was to follow that river up as far as the Williora, a small western tributary of the Darling, opposite the place whence Mitchell turned back in 1835, after his conflict with the natives, an episode which Sturt found that they bitterly remembered. Poole, Sturt's second in command, resembling Mitchell in figure and appearance, the Darling blacks addressed him as Major, and evinced marked hostility towards him. From Williora, or Laidley's Ponds, Sturt intended to strike north-west, hoping thus to avoid the gloomy environs of Lake Torrens, and the treacherous surface of its bed. At Moorundi, on the Murray, where Eyre was then stationed as Resident Magistrate, the party was mustered and the start made. In addition to Poole, Sturt was accompanied by Dr. Browne, a thorough bushman and an excellent surgeon, who went as a volunteer and personal friend. With the party as surveyor's draftsman, went McDouall Stuart, whose fame as explorer was afterwards destined nearly to equal that of his leader. In addition there were twelve men, eleven horses, one spring-cart, three bullock-drays, thirty bullocks, one horse-dray, two hundred sheep, four kangaroo dogs, and two sheep dogs. Eyre accompanied the expedition as far as Lake Victoria, which they reached on the 10th of September, 1844. On the 11th of October they arrived at Laidley's Ponds. This was the place from which Sturt intended to leave the Darling for the interior, and where he expected to find, from the account given him by the natives, a fair-sized creek heading from a low range, visible at a distance to the north-west. But he found the stream to be a mere surface channel, distributing the flood water of the Darling into some shallow lakes about seven or eight miles distant. Sturt despatched Poole and Stuart to this range to see if they could obtain a glimpse of the country beyond to the north-west. They returned with the rather startling intelligence that, from the top of a peak of the range, Poole had seen a large lake studded with islands. Although in his published journal, written some time after his return, Sturt makes light of Poole's fancied lake, which of course was the effect of a mirage, at that time his ardent fancy, and the extreme likelihood of the existence of a lake in that locality, made him believe that he was on the eve of an important discovery. In a letter to Mr. Morphett of Adelaide, he wrote:--