ience sees beneath youth's radiant glow, so that, like Falstaff,
I was only partly consoled by the remark that they hate us youth. But
in spite of their experience, and probably on account of youth's
radiant glow, I was not to be deterred, however, and at last I met
with Baron von Mueller, who, himself an explorer with the two
Gregorys, has always had the cause of Australian exploration at heart,
and he assisting, I was at length enabled to take the field. Baron
Mueller and I had consulted, and it was deemed advisable that I should
make a peculiar feature near the Finke river, called Chambers' Pillar,
my point of departure for the west. This Pillar is situated in
latitude 24 degrees 55' and longitude 133 degrees 50', being 1200
miles from Melbourne in a straight line, over which distance Mr.
Carmichael, a black boy, and I travelled. In the course of our travels
from Melbourne to the starting point, we reached Port Augusta, a
seaport though an inland town, at the head of Spencer's Gulf in South
Australia, first visited by the Investigator in 1803, and where, a few
miles to the eastwards, a fine bold range of mountains runs along for
scores of miles and bears the gallant navigator's name. A railway line
of 250 miles now connects Port Augusta with Adelaide. To this town was
the first section of the Transcontinental telegraph line carried; and
it was in those days the last place where I could get stores for my
expedition. Various telegraph stations are erected along the line, the
average distance between each being from 150 to 200 miles. There were
eleven stations between Port Augusta and Port Darwin. A railway is now
completed as far as the Peake Telegraph Station, about 450 miles
north-westwards from Port Augusta along the telegraph line towards
Port Darwin, to which it will no doubt be carried before many years
elapse.

From Port Augusta the Flinders range runs almost northerly for nearly
200 miles, throwing out numerous creeks (I must here remark that
throughout this work the word creek will often occur. This is not to
be considered in its English acceptation of an inlet from the sea,
but, no matter how far inland, it means, in Australia a watercourse.),
through rocky pine-clad glens and gorges, these all emptying, in times
of flood, into the salt lake Torrens, that peculiar depression which
baffled Eyre in 1840-1. Captain Frome, the Surveyor-General of the
Colony, dispelled the old horse-shoe-shaped illusion of this fe