"
As might have been expected, he followed down the Lachlan riding dry-shod
over the swamps and flats that had barred Oxley's progress, and finding
his lakes only green and grassy plains. Such had been the effect of the
exceptional season during which the late Surveyor-General had conducted
his explorations, that the country, save for the few land-marks afforded
by the hills here and there, could scarcely be recognised from his
description. Mitchell seems to have been strongly imbued with two leading
ideas, one being the existence of well-defined mountain chains in the
interior, forming systematic watersheds in a country where we now know
there is no system; the other that former explorers, however reliable
they might have been in their main facts, were quite at sea in any
deductions they had drawn from them, and that his theories would be
confirmed to their discomfiture.
The Surveyor-General had with him as second on this trip, Mr. Stapylton,
a surveyor, and his company consisted of Burnett, the overseer, and
twenty-two men, some of whom had been with him before.
For some reason or other he seemed particularly anxious to upset Sturt's
positive belief that the junction of the large river with the Murray
discovered by him, was the confluence of the Darling and the Murray.
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