THE EXPLORATION OF THE BARCOO

After the laudatory, but at the same time just terms, in which Sir Thomas Mitchell had described Australia Felix, now the colony of Victoria, the eulogies which he had bestowed on the Barcoo river and the adjacent country, were certainly calculated to excite the intensest expectations in New South Wales. After all his explorations of Australian rivers, especially of the Lachlan and Darling, Sir Thomas was not cured of his belief that the great course of Australian waters must be northwest. Indeed, had the Barcoo continued the same course as in the portion which he saw, it would have fallen into the Flinders. The strong and truly surprising terms which Sir Thomas had bestowed upon this river and the adjacent country, naturally stimulated the government of New South Wales to have them further explored; and, unfortunately, the river neither proved “the most important of Australia,” nor “the downs and plains through which it flowed, sufficient to supply the whole world with animal food.” The river, soon after he quitted it, took a decided course to the S.S.W., and ran, not through the most fertile regions of Australia, but into flats resembling those of the Darling, and into the sterile deserts towards the centre of the continent.