Riding day and night, Sturt at last reached the encampment, so exhausted as to be hardly able to stand:—
"When I dismounted, I had nearly fallen forward. Thinking that one of the kangaroo dogs, in his greeting, had pushed me between the legs, I turned round to give him a slap, but no dog was there, and I soon found out that what I had felt was nothing more than strong muscular action, brought on by riding."
Now came the question of their final escape. The water in the Depôt Creek was so much reduced that they feared that there would be none left in Flood's Creek, and if so, they were once more imprisoned. Browne undertook the long ride of one hundred and eighteen miles, which was to decide the question. Preparations had to be made for his journey by filling a bullock skin with water, and sending a dray with it as far as possible; and on the eighth day he returned.
"'Well Browne,' said Sturt, who was helpless in his tent, 'what news? Is it to be good or bad?' 'there is still water in the creek,' replied Browne, 'but that is all I can say; what there is, is as black as ink, and we must make haste, for in a week it will be gone.'"
The boat that was to have floated on the inland sea, was left to rot at the Depôt Glen, all the heaviest of the stores abandoned., and the retreat of over two hundred miles to the Darling commenced.
More bullock skins were fashioned into bags, to carry water for the stock, and with their aid, and that of a kindly shower of rain, they crossed the dry stage to Flood's Creek in safety. Here they found the vegetation more advanced, and with care, and constant activity in looking out for water on ahead, they gradually left behind them the scene of their labours and approached the Darling; Sturt having to be carried on one of the drays, and lifted on and off at each stoppage.
On the 21st December, they arrived at the camp of the relief party, under
Piesse, at Williorara, and Sturt's last expedition came to an end.
As he has often been termed the father of Australian exploration, it may be as well to look back on the result of his life-long labours. His burning desire to reach the heart of the continent had constantly led him into dangers and difficulties that other explorers shunned, and unfortunate as he always was in his seasons, he brought back a forbidding report of the, usefulness of the country he had discovered, which led to its gradual settlement, only after long years had passed, and men had grown accustomed to the desert, and laughed at its terrors; finding that experience robbed them of their first effect.
Sturt found the Darling, and traced the Murray to its mouth, thus discovering the great arteries of the water system of the most populated part of Australia, leaving the details to be filled in by others. In the interior he was the finder of Eyre's Creek and Cooper's Creek; one of the tributaries of the latter was soon afterwards discovered by Mitchell, and named by him the Victoria, now called the Barcoo. In these two creeks, as he called them, on account of the absence of flowing water in their beds, Sturt unwittingly crossed the second and only other great inland river system of the continent. In the basin he traversed, in which these creeks lost their character, he was riding over the united beds of the Barcoo, the Thomson, the Diamentina, and the Herbert, west of whose waters nothing in the shape of a defined system of drainage exists, until the rivers of the western coast are reached. As a scientific explorer then, whose object was to unravel the mystery of the interior, solve, if possible, the question of its strange peculiarity, and trace out its physical formation, Sturt may well be held the first and greatest. His success, perhaps, was greater than he himself imagined, he came back dispirited with failure but as before he had found the broad outlines of the plan of the drainage of the great plains, to be afterwards completed by the discoveries of the tributary streams.
In addition to his longing to be the first to reach the centre of Australia, Sturt fondly hoped that once past the southern zone of the tropics, he would find himself in a country blessed with a heavier and more constant rainfall; as it was impossible for him to know at that time, that the force of the north-west monsoon was expended on the northern coast, and none of the tropical deluge found its way with any degree of regularity to the thirsty inland slope; this theory appeared on the face of it, feasible. Although an after knowledge may have now enabled us to see the mistakes he made, and to regard his descriptions of the uninhabitable nature of the interior as exaggerated, it must be admitted that others in the same place and circumstances would have made similar errors, and drawn equally false conclusions.