Captain Charles Sturt, of the 39th Regiment! What visions are conjured up
when this name comes on the scene! Cracked and gaping plains, desolate,
desert and abandoned of life, scorched beneath a lurid sun of burning
fire, waterless, hopeless, relentless, and accursed: that is the picture
he draws of the great interior. He had followed up Oxley's footsteps and
exposed the fallacies into which that explorer had fallen, and erred just
as egregiously himself. True, like Oxley, he was the sport of the
seasons. Oxley had followed the rivers down when, year after year, the
regular rainfall had made them navigable for his boats, and had finally
lost them in oceans of reeds. Sturt came when the land was smitten with
drought, and the rivers had dwindled down to the tiniest trickle.
"In the creeks weeds had grown and withered, and grown again and young
saplings were now rising in their beds, nourished by the moisture that
still remained; but the large forest trees were drooping and many were
dead. The emus, with outstretched necks, gasping for breath, searched the
channels of the rivers for water, in vain; and the native dog, so thin
that he could hardly walk, seemed to implore some merciful hand to
dispatch him.
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