lived to return to the station, but died a few days afterwards. Amongst the other pioneers who contributed more or less to spread settlement in the province, and succeeded, may be mentioned Messrs. Hawker, Hughes, Campbell, Robinson, and Heywood. Perhaps, of all the journeys into the interior, none have excited more sustained interest than Sturt's. It must be admitted that his account, however truthful it may have appeared to him at the time, is misleading, and overdrawn. But whilst saying this let us look at the circumstances under which he received the impressions he has put on record. He was a thoroughly broken and disappointed man; for six months he had been shut up in his weary depôt prison, debarred from making any attempt to complete his work, watching his friend and companion die slowly before his eyes. When the kindly rains released him, he was turned back and constantly back by a strip of desert country, that seemed to dog him whichever way he turned. No wonder he fairly hated the place, and looked at all things through the heated, treacherous haze of the desert plains. When, therefore, he speaks of the awful temperature that rendered life unbearable, and the inland slopes of Australia unfitted for human habitation, it must be recalled that the party were weak and suffering, liable to feel oppressive heat or extreme cold, more keenly than strong and healthy men. In the ranges where Sturt spent his summer months of detention, there is now one of the wonderful mining townships of Australia, where men toil as laboriously as in a temperate zone, and the fires of the battery and the smelting furnace burn steadily day and night, in sight of the spot where Poole lies buried. And at the lower levels of the shafts trickle the waters of subterranean streams that Sturt never dreamt of. But though baffled, and unable to gain the goal he strove for, never did man better deserve success. His instructions were to reach the centre of the continent, to discover whether range or sea existed there; and if the former, to note the flow of the northern waters, but on no account to follow them down to the northern sea. As usual, the Home Office, in their official wisdom, knew more than did the colonists, and instructed him to proceed by way of Mount Arden; the route already tried and abandoned by Eyre. Sturt chose to proceed by the Darling. His plan was to follow that river up as far as the Williorara or Laidley's Ponds, a small western tributary of the Darling, opposite the point were Mitchell turned back, in 1835, after his conflict with the natives. Thence he intended to strike north-west, hoping thus to avoid the gloomy environs of Lake Torrens, and its treacherous bed. At Moorundi, on the Murray, he was met by Eyre, then resident magistrate at that place, and here the party mustered and made their start.