from South Australia into the interior under a more westerly meridian than that which had previously led Captain Sturt into an inhospitable desert, and traversed an extensive area available for sheep-pasture, with scenery pleasantly diversified by lakes and creeks of sat and fresh water. Encouraged by this success, he set out with only two followers, in March 1860, with the intention of crossing the country from sea to sea. The bold colonist very nearly succeeded in accomplishing his object, following generally the meridian of 134° E. Having gained the central region, where the name of Central Mount Stuart was bestowed upon a conspicuous hill, he proceeded thence to about latitude 18° 40′ S., or within 250 miles of the Gulf of Carpentaria, suffering much by the way, chiefly from the want of water. Here the country was good. All difficulties seemed to be at an end, and success certain, when an obstacle arose not experienced before, which proved insurmountable. Owing to the number and determined hostility of the natives, he was compelled to desist from the enterprise, and return to Adelaide, which he regained in the following September. In the meantime a carefully-organised and well-equipped expedition had started from Melbourne with the same object in view, which enabled the sister-colony of Victoria to snatch from South Australia the distinction of being the first to open a path through the land from the southern to the northern seas. Large subscriptions were readily raised for the attempt; the aid of the local government was liberally afforded; and the sympathies of the entire community were warmly enlisted in the adventure. An exploration-committee of experienced persons superintended the outfit of the travellers, which included the necessary amount of stores for a long absence, with all kinds of instruments for scientific observation, and the novel addition of a troop of camels, twenty-seven in number, expressly imported from Asia. The party consisted of Robert O'Hara Burke, the leader; Mr Wills, as scientific observer; Dr Herman Becker, medical attendant and botanist; Ludwig Becker, artist and naturalist; Mr Landells, in charge of the camels; and thirteen subordinates, with horses, wagons, and every provision likely to insure success -the most gigantic expedition ever fitted out in the Australian colonies. Full of high hope, they set forth on the 20th of August 1860, amid the cheers of a vast multitude assembled in the Royal Park, Melbourne, to witness their departure.

According to the plan previously arranged, Cooper's Creek was fixed upon as a place of rendezvous and final starting-point, a well-known locality, a little to the east of Sturt's track in 1845, and about one-third of the distance across the country. Here a permanent dépôt was to be established as a basis for further operations. Very slow progress was made by the heavy-laden camels, and further time being lost on the way by unfortunate altercations, the leader went on in advance to the station with a small select body, leaving the rest to follow at leisure with the weightier stores. Arrived at Cooper's Creek, he divided the reduced party, and without delay left the dépôt in charge of Brahe, a petty officer, with verbal instructions to await his return for three months or longer, if provisions and other circumstances would permit. From this point Burke pursued his journey with only three companions, consisting of Wills, the scientific assistant, two men, King and Gray, taking along six camels, one horse, and three months' provisions. These were the real explorers, destined to accomplish a hazardous enterprise, and make a great discovery, with the melancholy result of only one of them surviving its performance.

The start from Cooper's Creek was made on the 16th of December. After a week's travelling, a halt for Christmas was taken under favourable circumstances. Monday, 24th December 1860.—We took a day of rest on Gray's Creek (so called because Gray, having been detached from the party, had found good water there) to celebrate Christmas. This was doubly pleasant, as we had never in our most sanguine moments anticipated finding such a delightful oasis in the desert. Our camp was really an agreeable place, for

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we had all the advantages of food and water attending the position of a large creek or river, and were at the same time free of the annoyance of the numberless ants, flies, and mosquitoes, that are invariably met with amongst timber or heavy scrub.' Proceeding nearly due north, and keeping generally to the meridian of 140° E., they passed day after day well-watered plains, with numerous lines of timber, and every evidence of a good grazing country. The 11th of February 1861 brought them to the tide-water of the Gulf of Carpentaria, which seems to have been struck in an extensive marsh connected with the Albert River, ascended for some distance in boats by Captain Stokes in the year 1841. In attempting to gain a view of the open sea, they were baffled completely by a long reach of boggy ground, but had conclusive proofs of having gained the verge of the Northern Ocean. On returning by a new route, to the east of the outward track, a region of the finest character for pastoral purposes was passed through, with every appearance of possessing a permanent supply of water. Early in April, the want of provisions began to tell upon the travellers, and it became necessary to kill the horse for support. 'We found it healthy and tender,' says the journal, but without the slightest trace of fat in any portion of the body.' Soon afterwards Gray died of sheer exhaustion. His companions had thought rather lightly beforehand of his complaints of distress; and as their own sufferings came on, Wills took occasion to enter an expression of regret in his note-book at the circumstance: 'The exertion required to get up a slight piece of risingground induces an indescribable sensation of pain and helplessness, and the general lassitude makes one unfit for anything. Poor Gray must have suffered very much many times when we thought him shamming.'

Worn down with arduous travel, afflicted with scurvy, almost without clothes, their six camels reduced to two, the survivors struggled manfully on; and with half-paralysed limbs regained their old quarters at Cooper's Creek on the 21st of April, after an absence of four months and five days. It was nightfall when they arrived; and rarely has human fortitude been put to a greater test than by the disappointment which awaited them. The station was deserted. The word 'Dig,' cut on an adjoining tree, directed them to a cache where some provisions were buried-a welcome refreshment with a record to the effect that the party left in charge under Brahe had quitted the spot only seven hours before the staggering wayfarers reached it. Severe as was this misfortune, it was bravely borne, as a note written by Burke the next day, the last he ever penned, duly deposited in the cache, testifies. The return-party, from Carpentaria, consisting of myself, Mr Wills, and King (Gray dead) arrived here last night, and found that the dépôtparty had only started on the same day. We proceed on to-morrow slowly down the creek towards Adelaide by Mount Hopeless, and shall endeavour to follow Gregory's track, but we are very weak. The two camels are done up, and we shall not be able to travel further than four or five miles a day. Gray died on the road from exhaustion and fatigue. We have all suffered much from hunger. The provision left here will, I think, restore our strength. We have discovered a practicable route to Carpentaria, the chief portion of which lies on the 140th meridian of east longitude. There is some good country between this and the stony desert. From there to the tropic the country is dry and stony. Between the tropic and Carpentaria a considerable portion is rangy, but it is well watered and richly grassed. We reached the shores of Carpentaria on the 11th of February 1861. Greatly disappointed at finding the party here gone.-R. O'HARA BURKE, Leader.-P.S. The camels cannot travel, and we cannot walk, or we should follow the other party. We shall move very slowly down the creek.'

Mishaps attended the steps of the wanderers. Landa, one of the camels, having sunk in a bog, could not be extricated, and was shot as he lay. Rajah, the other, was killed

for food. After proceeding some distance in the direction indicated, their exhausted condition enforced a return to the dépôt, to which, by a scarcely conceivable mischance, Brahe had returned in the interim, and quitted finally without discovering a trace of their visit. Thus abandoned, life was preserved for some time by the seeds of the nardoo plant, which the natives make into bread; but it was too unnutritious to have any recruiting effect. Unable to crawl, Wills insisted upon being left, while the other two went in search of the blacks, as their last chance. Burke sunk on the way, and soon expired; and King, on returning to Wills, found him a corpse, stretched on the spot where he had separated from him. The sole survivor was fortunate enough to meet with natives, who kindly entertained him with their best fare, and among whom he was discovered by a relief-party from Melbourne on the 15th of September, wasted to a skeleton, and scarcely to be distinguished as a civilised being. By this party, the bodies of the two intrepid leaders were found, and committed with solemn sadness to the grave; but they were subsequently exhumed, removed to Melbourne, and honoured with a public funeral. Seldom has a catastrophe been precipitated by such a series of perfectly avoidable disasters, for the sacrifice of valuable lives seems to have been occasioned simply by misunderstanding and mismanagement. It has not, however, been made in vain. The men accomplished the main object of their mission, crossed and recrossed the great island-continent, discovering a fine habitable country where only desolation had been surmised.

In the following year, the veteran explorer, M'Douall Stuart, having started from Adelaide, reached Van Diemen's Bay, on the north coast, at the head of the first European party actually to catch sight of the bounding waves. The exclamation of one of his men, who was in advance, 'The sea!' elicited hearty cheers from his companions, and all hastened forwards to enjoy the spectacle. The leader dipped his feet, washed his face and hands in the Indian Ocean, and suitably commemorated the accomplishment of the great object of his journey. I had,' he remarks, 'an open space cleared, selected one of the tallest trees, stripped it of its lower branches, and on its highest fixed my flag, the Union Jack, with my name sewn in the centre of it. At one foot south from the foot of the tree is buried, about eight inches below the ground, an air-tight tin-case, in which is a paper with the following notice: South Australian Great Northern Exploring Expedition. The exploring-party under the command of John M'Douall Stuart arrived at this spot on the 25th of July 1862, having crossed the entire continent of Australia from the Southern to the Indian Ocean, passing through the centre. They left the city of Adelaide on the 26th day of October 1861, and the most northern station of the colony on the 21st of January 1862. To commemorate this happy event they have raised this flag. All well. God save the Queen!' More recently, Mr M'Kinlay crossed the country from Adelaide to the Gulf of Carpentaria, travelling thence to the east coast, and Mr Landsborough has intersected it southward from the shores of the gulf to the colony of Victoria. As the result of these journeys, Central Australia, instead of being the burning desert it was once supposed, is now known to comprise vast habitable tracts, destined at no distant date to be the nursery and home of flourishing communities.

ADDENDA.

ADVENTURE to the North Polar zone, in the service of science, though relinquished for some time by the British Government from prudential and economical motives, has recently been prosecuted with spirit by foreign nations, Americans, Swedes, and Germans, chiefly as the result of private liberality. Successive expeditions have visited the north of Baffin's bay, the shores of Spitzbergen, and the Arctic ocean, thence to the east coast of Greenland. In these localities a considerable number of positions have been astronomically determined, serving to correct important errors in maps and charts. A valuable series of meteorological observations has also been made, with large collections in geology, botany, and zoology. Animal life, too, has been dredged up at enormous depths in the ocean, where before it had been supposed impossible to exist; and additional evidence has been obtained, perfectly conclusive, that at a past and remote period of time, the climate of these ice-bound regions corresponded to that of the countries lying near the equator. But no success has hitherto been attained in the specific object contemplated by these enterprises, that of penetrating through the outlying ice-fields to the north axis of our globe, where, according to the theory of some physical geographers, there is a comparatively open sea. Down to the present date, the farthest north attained by man remains the prize of England, that of 82° 45', reached by Parry in his celebrated boat and sledge journey over the ice in 1827. Professor Nordenskiold, a Swedish savan, out in the ship Sophia for the purpose stated, in 1868, very closely approached the same high latitude, and came, with his companions, to the conclusion, that the idea of an open space of water existing within the polar area is quite chimerical. Even should it ever be proved to be a fact, the failures in attempting to reach the comparatively mild and unencumbered basin must inevitably be so numerous and the risk so imminent, as to render the discovery a profitless achievement.

No barren triumph has been won by science in the eastern part of the Egyptian delta, by taking advantage of its geographical facilities of lakes and low land, to run a maritime canal through the Isthmus of Suez. This navigable channel, opened for traffic in 1869, with a fair prospect of success, connects the waters of the Mediterranean and the Red sea basins, and brings, through them, the North Atlantic into closer intercommunication with the Indian ocean. It allows the passage of large vessels by steam or towing, and effects a saving of nearly half the time in the conveyance of goods between Liverpool and Bombay, as compared with the route by the Cape of Good Hope. The hitherto successful experiment has naturally revived the long-standing project of an inter-oceanic canal, connecting the expanses of the Atlantic and Pacific by a cutting through the long, tortuous, and narrow isthmus of Central America, thereby saving vessels the tedious voyage round Cape Horn in passing from the one to the other. The Indians of Darien,

where the isthmus is the narrowest, averse to intruders into their territory, under the idea of their race being driven out if civilised man gains a standing-point in it, together with the unhealthy swamps and tangled forests of the interior, have hitherto prevented complete preliminary surveys of the district being made. But a competently equipped expedition, at the expense of the United States' government, is at present engaged in searching for a practicable route, beginning with the neck of land lying between Caledonia Bay on the side of the Atlantic, and the Gulf of San Miguel on that of the Pacific. The saving of distance by such a line between New York and San Francisco would be 14,000 miles, as compared with the distance around Cape Horn.

The civil engineer has rapidly followed the steps of the scientific explorer in the great range of country lying westward of the river Missouri, and extending thence to the Pacific seaboard. Little more than a quarter of a century ago, nearly the whole of this region was a terra incognita, except to wandering parties of trappers and fur-hunters, whose experience of inhospitable tracts encountered in it was hastily deemed to be characteristic of the entire surface, therefore not to be made available for the purposes of civilisation. The error was corrected by Colonel Fremont, who reduced the desert area to comparatively small dimensions, and proved the feasibility of overland communication between the two sides of the continent. In successive journeys during the interval from 1842 to 1849, partly in the service of the government, and partly the result of his own enterprise, he examined the south pass of the Rocky Mountains, and beyond it met with the head waters of the Colorado flowing to the Gulf of California. He stood on the shore of the Great Salt Lake, of which only very vague notions had before been entertained, and conducted the first boat expedition ever attempted on its surface; effected the passage of the Sierra Nevada in the depth of winter, which the Indians declared no man could cross, and descended into the smiling valleys bordering the Pacific ocean. This extensive region, now distributed into regularly organised states and territories, has become the home of a rapidly-growing population, attracted by the unexpected disclosure of great mineral wealth beneath the surface, and is now traversed by an inter-oceanic railway, opened throughout in 1869, which links together in unbroken speedy communication the Atlantic and Pacific borders of the American Union. The journey is regularly made in seven days, and letters from London reach San Francisco in seventeen days. In scarcely appreciable time a telegraphic signal travels from Massachussets to California and back, through a total distance of 7200 miles. 'Summit Station,' the highest point on the railway, is at the elevation of 7042 feet, in the heart of the Sierra Nevada range. Properly has the name of the original explorer been given to one of the loftiest of the Rocky Mountains, Fremont's Peak,' which rises to the height of 13,570 feet, overlooks eastward the basin of the Upper Missouri, and westward the waters of the Great Salt Lake.

While the problem of the true Nile source awaits solution, there is no other part of the mystery' of the great river, as it appeared to the ancient mind, left to be unveiled. Sir S. Baker, the discoverer of the Albert Nyanza, has shown that, while the lakes of Central Africa supply in the White Nile a stream which supports the life of Egypt, being of sufficient volume throughout all seasons to meet the waste of evaporation and absorption, yet it could never overflow its banks, and cultivation would therefore be restricted to its borders, if unaided by the tributaries from Abyssinia. It appears also, contrary to previous opinion, that, among these tributaries, the Blue Nile, that of Bruce, whose fountains he visited, acts a very unimportant part in causing the annual overflow. The distinction belongs to the Atbara, or Black River, so called from the quantity of black earth brought down by it during the rains, which, being deposited, is left upon the