all efforts to penetrate the mountains, had somewhat damped the ardour of
the colonists.

But throughout these years the stock steadily increased, and the severe
drought in 1813 led some of the settlers to make another attempt to find
out new pasture lands.

The victory that at last crowned the struggle may be said to have at once
inaugurated a new phase of exploration The days of expeditions on foot,
when each man carried his own supply of provisions, and the limit of
their journey only extended a little over a hundred miles, were past.
Horses were now destined to play an important part in the outfit of the
explorer, and take their share of sacrificing their lives in the cause.

The results gained by these first journeys were far from promising;
always hoping to find a navigable river, or rivers, through the interior,
the colonists found themselves most unexpectedly baffled. Having
discovered the head waters of large streams flowing on a western course,
with a sufficient depth of water for boat navigation, it appeared
conclusive that to follow them down would in course of time lead the
party doing so to the sea; the only probable obstacle which would come in
the way would be falls. But the rivers led them into shallow stagnant
swamps, with no limit within ken; the outskirts, so they deemed, of an
inland sea.

Across here Oxley wrote, DESERT; unfitted ever to sustain settlement, and
in doing this he did not err more glaringly than many later pioneers. It
must be borne in mind that the characteristics of the inland plain were
all new to the travellers who first ventured to enter its confines. They
had not won the key of the desert; the fashion in which nature adapted