The results gained by these first journeys were far from promising; always hoping to find a navigable river, or rivers, through the interior, the colonists found themselves most unexpectedly baffled. Having discovered the head waters of large streams flowing on a western course, with a sufficient depth of water for boat navigation, it appeared conclusive that to follow them down would in course of time lead the party doing so to the sea; the only probable obstacle which would come in the way would be falls. But the rivers led them into shallow stagnant swamps, with no limit within ken; the outskirts, so they deemed, of an inland sea. Across here Oxley wrote, DESERT; unfitted ever to sustain settlement, and in doing this he did not err more glaringly than many later pioneers. It must be borne in mind that the characteristics of the inland plain were all new to the travellers who first ventured to enter its confines. They had not won the key of the desert; the fashion in which nature adapted herself to climatic decrees was a lesson still to be learnt. Oxley spoke honestly when, in bitter disappointment, he prophesied the future of the great plain to be that of an unprofitable waste, wherein the work of men's hands and the cunning of their brains would avail nothing; but he spoke hastily and almost thoughtlessly. The great plain had its glorious mission to fulfil, but the secret, like all things worth knowing, was one that took time and labour to solve; not in one or two generations was it to be done. There was one great factor in the reclamation of the desert that Oxley could not take into his calculations--for he did not know its power--the sure, if gradual change wrought by stocking. Under the ceaseless tread of myriad hoofs, the loose, open soil was to become firm and hard, whilst fresh growths of herb and grass followed the footsteps of the invading herds. The shaking bogs and morasses were to become solidified, and the waters that permeated them to retreat into well defined chains of ponds and lagoons. This the first explorer could not foresee, he was disheartened by what he found, and unwitting of the change that was to follow he gave a hostile verdict. But although it did not fall to his lot to trace out the great system of the Murray watershed, he had, at any rate, the proud satisfaction of achieving the first stage.