modern horses' pack-saddles in lieu of the dreadful old English
sumpter horse furniture that went by that name; he also invented a new
kind of compass known as Gregory's Patent, unequalled for steering on
horseback, and through dense scrubs where an ordinary compass would be
almost useless, while steering on camels in dense scrubs, on a given
bearing, without a Gregory would be next to impossible; it would be
far easier indeed, if not absolutely necessary, to walk and lead them,
which has to be done in almost all camel countries.

In 1854 Austin made a lengthened journey to the east and northwards,
from the old settled places of Western Australia, and in 1856 Augustus
Gregory conducted the North Australian Expedition, fitted out under
the auspices of the Royal Geographical Society of London. Landing at
Stokes's Treachery Bay, Gregory and his brother Frank explored
Stokes's Victoria River to its sources, and found another watercourse,
whose waters, running inland, somewhat revived the old theory of the
inland sea. Upon tracing this river, which he named Sturt's Creek,
after the father of Australian exploration, it was found to exhaust
itself in a circular basin, which was named Termination Lake.
Retracing the creek to where the depot was situated, the party
travelled across a stretch of unknown country for some two hundred
miles, and striking Leichhardt's Port Essington track on Leichhardt's
Roper River, his route was followed too closely for hundreds of miles
until civilisation was reached. My friend Baron von Mueller
accompanied this expedition as botanist, naturalist, surgeon and
physician.

Soon after his return from his northern expedition, Gregory was
despatched in 1858 by the Government of New South Wales to search
again for the lost explorer Leichhardt, who had then been missing ten