point. However, the identity of this tributary to the Murray with the Darling, remains still to be ascertained,[1] before the declension of so considerable a portion of the interior can be said to be southerly, and before one can positively assert, with the president of a society in New South Wales, either that an interesting fact has been established—viz. 'that all the waters from the Bathurst country, owing to the dip of the earth, run to the south-west extremities of eastern Australia,'—or that these discoveries have opened a water communication from the south coast, 'one thousand miles through a variety of agricultural and pastoral country, in one of the finest climates which the world can boast of,' and capable of sustaining 'millions of emigrants.'
The character of the Darling, as also the general direction of its course, beyond the point to which it has been traced, we have yet to ascertain. Since, however, it is by far the most considerable inland stream at present known in that country, it is to be hoped, that its further examination, which may furnish much interesting information respecting the actual features of the more remote regions of the interior to the north-west, will ere long be prosecuted. But to follow the expedition down the Murray.
That river, after it receives the supposed Darling, continues its course upwards of a degree farther to the westward, and in that space receives a second stream, which falls in on its left bank from the south-east. This tributary stream, which is described as a river of 'considerable importance,' and was named the 'Lindesay,' is most probably the 'Goulburn' of the same indefatigable explorers, whose journey overland to the south coast in 1824, I have already adverted to, and who, in fording their river at a part where its channel presented a breadth of eighty yards, left it winding its course to the north-west. From this point, the Murray assumed a new feature, and along its northern bank extended a range of cliffs, which appeared to the party, as they passed beneath them, to be of 'partial volcanic origin.' The navigation at length became rather intricate, for those cliffs being immediately succeeded by others on each bank, of limestone, the river was found to force its way through a glen of that rock, in its passage frequently striking bases of precipices of the same formation, which rose to a perpendicular eleva-
- ↑ There is an intermediate tract of unknown country, exceeding in extent four hundred miles, between the southernmost point of Captain Sturt's examination of the Darling River, and the junction of the stream, discovered in the progress of this second expedition, flowing from the northward into the Murray; and as these exhibit no one character common to both, we cannot, in the present state of our information, arrive at a satisfactory conclusion, that the tributary to the last-mentioned river, and that great drain of the country to the north of the parallel of 34°, the Darling, are one and the same stream. The river flowing into the Murray is said to be sweet to the taste; the Darling, on the other hand, is described as strongly impregnated with salt.
