this occasion, on account of indisposition and other causes. But the 18th degree of latitude had been reached, where the watershed divided the rivers of the Gulf of Carpentaria from the Victoria River, flowing towards the north-west coast. He had also proved that the interior of Australia was not a stony desert, like the region visited by Sturt in 1845. On the first day of the next year, 1861, Mr Stuart again started for a second attempt to cross the continent, which occupied him eight months. He failed, however, to advance further than one geographical degree north of the point reached in I860, his progress being arrested by dense scrubs and the want of water.
Meanwhile, in the province of Victoria, by means of a fund subscribed among the colonists and a grant by the Legislature, the ill-fated expedition of Messrs Burke and Wills was started. It made for the Barcoo, with a view to reach the Gulf of Carpentaria by a northerly course midway between Sturt s track to the west and Leichardt s to the east. The leading men of the party were Mr Robert O Hara Burke, an officer of police, and Mr William John Wills, of the Melbourne observatory. Messrs Burke and Wills, with two men named Gray and King, left the others behind at the Barcoo on 16th December 1860, and proceeded, with a horse and six camels, over the desert traversed by Sturt fifteen years before. They got on in spite of great difficulties, past the M Kinlay range of mountains, S. lat. 21 and 22, and then reached the Flinders River, which flows into the head of the Gulf of Carpentaria. Here, without actually standing on the sea- beach of the northern shore, they met the tidal waters of the sea. On February 23, 1861, they commenced the return journey, having in effect accomplished the feat of crossing the Australian continent. Unhappily, three of the party perished on the road home. Gray, who had fallen ill, died on the 16th of April. Five -days later, Burke, Wills, and King had repassed the desert to the place on Cooper Creek (the Barcoo, S. lat. 27 40 , E. long. 140 30 ), where they had left the depot, with the rest of the expedition. Here they experienced a cruel dis appointment. The depot was abandoned; the men in charge had quitted the place the same day, believing that Burke and those with him were lost. The main body of the expedition, which should have been led up by a Mr Wright, from Menindie, on the Darling, was miscon ducted and fatally delayed. Burke, Wills, and King, when they found themselves so fearfully left alone and unprovided in the wilderness, wandered about in that district till near the end of June. They subsisted miser ably on the bounty of some natives, and partly by feeding on the seeds of a plant called nardoo. At last both Wills and Burke died of starvation. King, the sole survivor, was saved by meeting the friendly blacks, and was found alive in September by Mr A. W. Howitt s party, sent on purpose to find and relieve that of Burke.
Four other parties, besides Howitt s, were sent out that year from different Australian provinces. Three of them, respectively commanded by Mr Walker, Mr Lands- borough, and Mr Norman, sailed to the north, where the latter two landed on the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria, while Mr Walker marched inland from Rockhampton. The fourth party, under Mr J. M Kinlay, from Adelaide, made for the Barcoo by way of Lake Torrens. By these means, the unknown region of Mid Australia was simultaneously entered from the north, south, east, and west, and important additions were made to geographical knowledge. Lands- borough crossed the entire continent from north to south, between February and June 1862 ; and M Kinlay, from south to north, before the end of August in that year. The interior of New South Wales and Queensland, all that lies east of the 140th degree of longitude, was examined. The Barcoo and its tributary streams were traced from the Queensland mountains, holding a south-westerly course to Lake Eyre in South Australia; the Flinders, the Gilbert, the Gregory, and other northern rivers water ing the country towards the Gulf of Carpentaria were also explored. These valuable additions to Australian geography were gained through humane efforts to relieve the lost explorers. The bodies of Burke and Wills were recovered and brought to Melbourne for a solemn public funeral, and a noble monument has been erected to their honour. Mr Stuart, in 1862, made his third and final attempt to traverse the continent from Adelaide along a central line, which, inclining a little westward, reaches the north coast of Arnhem Land, opposite Melville Island. He started in January, and on April 7 reached the farthest northern point, near S. lat. 17, where he had turned back in May of the preceding year. He then pushed on, through a very thick forest, with scarcely any water, till he came to the streams which supply the Roper, a river flowing into the western part of the Gulf of Carpentaria. Having crossed a table-land of sandstone which divides these streams from those running to the western shores of Arnhem Land, Mr Stuart, in the month of July, passed down what is called the Adelaide River of North Australia. Thus he came at length to stand on the verge of the Indian Ocean ; " gazing upon it," a writer has said, " with as much delight as Balboa, when he had crossed the Isthmus of Darien from the Atlantic to the Pacific." The line crossing Australia which was thus explored has since been occupied by the electric telegraph connecting Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, and other Australian cities with London.
A third part, at least, of the interior of the whole con tinent, between the central line of Stuart and the known parts of West Australia, from about 120 to 134 E. long., an extent of half a million square miles, still remained a blank in the map. But the two expeditions of 1873, conducted by Mr Gosse and Colonel Egerton Warburton, have made a beginning in the exploration of this terra incognita west of the central telegraph route. That line of more than 1800 miles, having its southern extremity at the head of Spencer Gulf, its northern at Port Darwin, in Arnhem Land, passes Central Mount Stuart, in the middle of the continent, S. lat. 22, E. long. 134. Mr Gosse, with men and horses provided by the South Australian Government, started on April 2 1 from the telegraph station fifty miles south of Central Mount Stuart, to strike into West Australia. He passed the Reynolds range and Lake Amadeus in that direction, but was compelled to turn south, where he found a tract of well-watered grassy land. A singular rock of conglomerate, 2 miles long, 1 mile wide, and 1100 feet high, with a spring of water in its centre, struck his attention. The country was mostly poor and barren, sandy hillocks, with scanty growth of spinifex. Mr Gosse, having travelled above 600 miles, and getting to 26 32 S. lat. and 127 E. long., two degrees within the West Australian boundary, was forced to return. Meantime a more successful attempt to reach the western coast from the centre of Australia has been made by Colonel Warburton, with thirty camels, provided by Mr T. Elder, M.L.C., of South Australia. Leaving the telegraph line at Alice Springs (23 40 S. lat., 133 14 E. long.), 1120 miles north of Adelaide city, Warburton succeeded in making his way to the De Grey River, West Australia. Overland routes have now been found possible, though scarcely convenient for traffic, between all the widely separated Australian provinces. In Northern Queensland, also, there have been several recent explorations, with results of some interest. That performed by Mr W.
Hann, with Messrs Warner, Tate, and Taylor, in 1873,
