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Updated: May 2, 2025
Finding the place eligible in every respect for the formation of a depot, a stockade of logs was erected and the encampment christened Fort Bourke. The boats were launched, but the navigation of the river was found to be impeded by shallow rapids, so the party returned to Fort Bourke, and Mitchell with four men made an excursion down the river to the point where Sturt and Hume turned back.
One of the greatest victories over natural difficulties that was ever gained by British courage and perseverance, was the exploring of the course of the Morrumbidgee and Murray rivers by Captain Sturt and his party, in the year 1830; and since their route was through a new country, and their descent from the high lands south-westward of Sydney, to the southern coast of New Holland was an amazing enterprise to project, much more to accomplish, an abridged account of it may not be unacceptable to the reader.
To walk that ancient wood, on the coarse and broken ground, among fallen timber, bog, bush, water-pass, and hillock, would have tried a sturdy forester by broad day; it was, to us weary travellers, after a day of sturt, a madness to seek through it at night for a woman and child whose particular concealment we had no means of guessing.
Even the wounds received by her on the day Lieutenant Sturt was killed were not aggravated by the accident. Before dark that day there were twenty-five distinct shocks, and about fifteen more during the night. For some weeks after this they were constantly occurring. At one spot, not far away, 120 Afghans and 20 Hindus were buried in the ruins of buildings shaken to the ground.
Sir H. Ayers, K.C.M.G., had much pleasure in proposing a toast that had been allotted to him, and made no doubt that the company would have equal pleasure in responding to it. The toast was Early Explorers, and he had been requested to associate with it the name of Mr. John Chambers. There was the name of Sturt that came first in the list of our old explorers.
Anxious to avert hostilities, Sturt steered straight for them, thinking to make friends; but when almost too close to avoid a meeting, he could see that the matter was serious. The blacks had their spears poised for throwing, and their women were behind with a fresh supply.
So far as my opinion, formed in my wanderings over the greater portions of the country explored by Sturt, goes, his estimate of the regions he visited has scarcely been borne out according to the views of the present day.
By going due East from Mount Ernest I could have cut the Sturt Creek in less than one hundred miles' travel, which would have simplified our journey.
This plain was called by Sturt the "Stony Desert," for, on descending, he found it covered with innumerable pieces of quartz and sandstone, among which the horses wearily stumbled. Sturt wished to penetrate as far as the tropic of Capricorn; but summer was again at hand, their water was failing, and they could find neither stream nor pool.
There is an Almighty invisible Being in whose hands are all events man may propose, but it is for God only to dispose let us therefore implore his protection." "The Hon. Captain Sturt then received a very handsome Union Jack, neatly worked in silk; and presenting it to Mr. Eyre, spoke nearly as follows:
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