Finding that a vessel would shortly sail for Adelaide, I at once engaged my passage, and proceeded to make arrangements for leaving King George's Sound.
To the Governor of the Colony, Mr. Hutt, I wrote a brief report of my journey, which was forwarded, with a copy both of my own and Wylie's depositions, relative to the melancholy loss of my overseer on the 29th April. I then had my horses got up from the King's river, and left them in the care of Mr. Phillips, who had in the most friendly manner offered to take charge of them until they recovered their condition and could be sold.
Wylie was to remain at the Sound with his friends, and to receive from the Government a weekly allowance of provisions, [Note 29: This was confirmed by Governor Hutt.] by order of Mr. Phillips; who promised to recommend that it should be permanently continued, as a reward for the fidelity and good conduct he had displayed whilst accompanying me in the desert.
On the 13th July I wished my friends good bye, and in the afternoon went on board the Truelove to sail for Adelaide; whilst working out of harbour we were accompanied as long as any of the shore boats remained, by some of the natives of the place, who were most anxious to have gone with me to Adelaide. Wylie had given them so flattering an account of South Australia and its pleasures, that he had excited the envy and curiosity of the whole tribe; dozens applied to me to take them, and I really think I could have filled the ship had I been disposed; one or two, more persevering than the rest, would not be denied, and stuck close to the vessel to the last, in the hope that I might relent and take them with me before the pilot boat left, but upon this occurring, to their great discomforture, they were compelled to return disappointed.
On the afternoon of the 26th of July I arrived in Adelaide, after an absence of one year and twenty-six days.
Chapter VI.
CONCLUDING REMARKS.
Having now brought to a close the narrative of my explorations in 1840-1, it may not be out of place to take a brief and cursory review of the whole, and to state generally what have been the results effected. In making this summary, I have no important rivers to enumerate, no fertile regions to point out for the future spread of colonization and civilization, or no noble ranges to describe from which are washed the debris that might form a rich and fertile district beneath them; on the contrary, all has been arid and barren in the extreme.
Such, indeed, has been the sterile and desolate character of the wilderness I have traversed, and so great have been the difficulties thereby entailed upon me, that throughout by far the greater portion of it, I have never been able to delay a moment in my route, or to deviate in any way from the line I was pursuing, to reconnoitre or examine what may haply be beyond. Even in the latter part of my travels, when within the colony of Western Australia, and when the occasionally meeting with tracts of a better soil, or with watercourses appearing to have an outlet to the ocean, rendered the country one of much greater interest, I was quite unable, from the circumstances under which I was placed, the reduced and worn-out state of my horses, and the solitary manner in which I was travelling, ever to deviate from my direct line of route, either to examine more satisfactorily the character of the country, or to determine whether the watercourses, some of which occasionally bore the character of rivers (though of only short course), had embouchures opening to the sea or not.
In a geographical point of view, I would hope the result of my labours has not been either uninteresting, or incommensurate with the nature of the expedition placed under my command, and the character of the country I had to explore. By including in the summary I am now making, the journeys I undertook in 1839, as well as those of 1840-1 (for a considerable portion of the country then examined was recrossed by the Northern Expedition), it will be seen that I have discovered and examined a tract of country to the north of Adelaide, which was previously unknown, of about 270 miles in length, extending between the parallels of 33 degrees 40 minutes and 29 degrees S. latitude. In longitude, that part of my route which was before unknown, extends between the parallels of 138 degrees E., and 118 degrees 40 minutes E., or about 1060 miles of direct distance. These being connected with the previously known portions of South-western, South-eastern, and part of Southern Australia, complete the examination of the whole of the south line of the coast of this continent. Indeed, I have myself (at various times) crossed over the whole of this distance from east to west, from Sydney to Swan River. In the early part of the Expedition, 1840, the continuation of Flinders range, from Mount Arden, was traced and laid down to its termination, near the parallel of 29 degrees S. It was ascertained to be hemmed in by an impassable barrier, consisting of the basin of an immense lake, which I named Lake Torrens, and which, commencing from the head of Spencer's Gulf, increased in width as it swept to the north-west, but subsequently bent round again to the north-east, east and south-east, in correspondence with the trend of Flinders range, the northern extremity of which it completely surrounded in the form of a horse-shoe. The shores of this lake I visited to the westward of Flinders range, at three different points, from eighty to ninety miles apart from each other, and on all these occasions I found the basin to consist, as far as I could penetrate, of a mass of mud and sand, coated on the surface with a crust of salt, but having water mixed with it beneath. At the most north-westerly point attained by me, water was found in an arm of the main lake, about two feet deep, clear, and salt as the sea; it did not extend, however, more than two or three hundred yards, nor did it continue to the bed of the main lake, which appeared, from a rise that I ascended near the arm, to be of the same character and consistency as before. The whole course of the lake, to the farthest point visited by me, was bounded by a steep, continuous, sandy ridge, exactly like a sea-shore ridge; those parts of its course to the north, and to the east of Flinders range, which I did not go down to, were seen and laid down from various heights in that mountain chain. Altogether, the outline of this extraordinary feature, as thus observed and traced, could not have extended over a circuit of less than 400 miles.