After six days, when the last ounce of flour had been served out, the men came back with horses and drays, and all trouble was at an end. This was on the 18th April, eighty-eight days after their departure from the depôt, during which they had voyaged two thousand miles. This expedition, from whatever light it is regarded, either as the most important contribution ever made to Australian geography, or as an example of most wonderful endurance, and patient heroism is equally one of the most glorious records in this history. The leader and his men were alike worthy of each other. We have now had in review the opinion of many men on the future of the great interior, and seen how they all alike predicted for it barrenness and desolation. Even the satisfaction that Sturt felt at accomplishing the descent of the Murray was qualified by a consideration of the valueless country it flowed through. The question will naturally be asked, how could men of such ability and more than average shrewdness make such a gross mistake as the succeeding years have proved their opinion to be? The principal reason will be found in their want of experience in witnessing the development and improvement of land by stocking, and their ignorance of the value of the vegetation they condemned as worthless. Hume was the only man amongst them exceptionally fitted by training to judge of the capability of the land, and we do not often get at his direct opinion, nor is it likely that, with the memory of the green meadow lands and sparkling waters of the Morumbidgee fresh in his mind, it would be a very favourable one. Oxley and Sturt both wrote smarting under disappointment, and both had been suddenly confronted with a new and strange experience which they could associate with nothing but the idea of a desert. That all this seemingly desolate waste should one day have a distinctive value of its own was what they could hardly dream of. CHAPTER IV. Settlement at King George's Sound--The free colony of Swan River founded--Governor Stirling--Captain Bannister crosses from Perth to King George's Sound--Explorations by Lieutenant Roe--Disappointing nature of the interior--Bunbury, Wilson, and Moore--Settlement on the North Coast--Melville Island and Raffles Bay--An escaped convict's story--The fabulous Kindur River--Major Mitchell starts in search of it--Discovery of the Namoi--The Nundawar Range--Failure of the boats--Reach the Gwydir River of Cunningham--The KARAULA--Its identity with the Darling--Murder of the two bullock-drivers--Mitchell's return--Murder of Captain Barker in Encounter Bay--Major Mitchell's second expedition to trace the course of the Darling--Traces the Bogan to its junction with that river--Fort Bourke--Progress down the river--Hostility of the natives--Skirmish with them--Return--Mitchell's third expedition--The Lachlan followed--Junction of the Darling and the Murray reached--Mitchell's discovery of Australia Felix.