CHAPTER IV.
HUME AND HOVELL'S EXPEDITION FROM LAKE GEORGE TO PORT PHILLIP.
Sir Thomas Brisbane succeeded to the Government of New South Wales on the 1st of December, 1821. The work of exploration, which had received such extraordinary impulse under Macquarie, was taken up with corresponding zeal by the new Governor. The southern limit of discovery at this period stood somewhere about Lake George; and public attention was largely directed to the unknown country lying beyond this outpost. The passion for exploration in this quarter had been discouraged, but not suppressed, by a rash and unwarranted statement made by Oxley in the journal he had given to the world. "We had demonstrated beyond a doubt," said he, "that no river could fall into the sea between Cape Otway and Spencer's Gulf—at least, none deriving its waters from the eastern coast—and that the country south of the parallel of 34 deg., and west of the meridian 147 deg. 30 min. was uninhabitable and useless for all the purposes of civilized man." This singularly unfortunate assertion should have been affirmative instead of negative, for the principal rivers of the continent enter the sea within the limits here specified, and some of the largest tracts of good land in Australia are enclosed by these lines of longitude and latitude.
