recognition of his numerous and valuable services was so tardily
conferred upon him. (Dr. W.H. Browne, who accompanied Sturt to Central
Australia in 1843-5 as surgeon and naturalist, is living in London;
and another earlier companion of the Father of Australian Exploration,
George McCleay, still survives.)

These two great travellers were followed by, or worked simultaneously,
although in a totally different part of the continent, namely the
north-west coast, with Sir George Grey in 1837-1839. His labours and
escapes from death by spear-wounds, shipwreck, starvation, thirst, and
fatigue, fill his volumes with incidents of the deepest interest.
Edward Eyre, subsequently known as Governor Eyre, made an attempt to
reach, in 1840-1841, Central Australia by a route north from the city
of Adelaide; and as Sturt imagined himself surrounded by a desert, so
Eyre thought he was hemmed in by a circular or horse-shoe-shaped salt
depression, which he called Lake Torrens; because, wherever he tried
to push northwards, north-westwards, eastwards, or north-eastwards, he
invariably came upon the shores of one of these objectionable and
impassable features. As we now know, there are several of them with
spaces of traversable ground between, instead of the obstacle being
one continuous circle by which he supposed he was surrounded. In
consequence of his inability to overcome this obstruction, Eyre gave
up the attempt to penetrate into Central Australia, but pushing
westerly, round the head of Flinders' Spencer's Gulf, where now the
inland seaport town of Port Augusta stands, he forced his way along
the coast line from Port Lincoln to Fowler's Bay (Flinders), and
thence along the perpendicular cliffs of the Great Australian Bight to
Albany, at King George's Sound.

This journey of Eyre's was very remarkable in more ways than one; its