brink of the Stony Desert. Coming suddenly on it I almost lost my
breath. If anything, it looked more forbidding than before. Herbless and
treeless, it filled more than half of the horizon. Not an object was
visible on which to steer, yet we held on our course by compass like a
ship at sea.

"Poor Browne was in excruciating pain from scurvy. Every day I expected
to find him unable to stir. My men were ill from exposure, scanty food,
and muddy water; my horses leg-weary and reduced to skeletons. I alone
stood unscathed, but I could not bear to leave my companion in that
heartless desert.

"Finding myself baffled to the north and to the west, seeing no hope of
rain, realizing that my retreat was too probably already cut off, I
reluctantly turned back to the depot, 443 miles distant, and only
through the help of Providence did we at length reach it."

Sturt, as he mounted to begin his retreat, was nearly induced to turn
again by "a flock of paroquets that flew shrieking from the north
towards Eyre's Creek. They proved that to the last we had followed with
unerring precision the line of migration."



SCOPE AND RESULTS OF CENTRAL EXPEDITION AS SUMMED UP BY STURT

My instructions directed me to gain the meridian of Mount Arden or that
of 138°, with a view to determine whether there were any chain of
mountains connected with the high lands seen by Mr. Eyre to the westward
of Lake Torrens, and running into the interior from south-west to