The great fact added to the geographical knowledge of Australia by the
successful termination of this trip, was the identity of the Darling with
the KARAULA on the north, and with Sturt's Murray junction on the south.
It was now satisfactorily settled that this river was the channel that
received all the tributary streams flowing westward--so far north, at any
rate, as Cunningham's researches had extended, and that therefore their
final outlet was in Lake Alexandrina, and the idea of a river winding
through the interior to the north-west coast had to be finally
relinquished.
This journey of Mitchell's was also instrumental in somewhat palliating
the view held of the uninhabitable nature of the far interior; although
the true character of the country had yet to be learnt and appreciated.
His stay on the banks of the Darling at least lifted from those plains
the stigma of a grassless, naked waste, intersected by a river of brine.
Mitchell, too, was a keen observer of the habits and customs of the
blacks, he was remarkably quick at detecting tribal differences and
distinctions, and his record of his intercourse with them, which occupies
so large a portion of his journals, was interesting then, when so little
had been written on the subject, and is interesting now as the account of
the white man's first incursions into the hunting ground of a fast
vanishing race.
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