he place where they had first come upon it,
and they observed the same characteristics as before, including the
saltness. This was a blow to Sturt, who had hoped to find it free from
salinity. Fortunately they were not distressed for fresh water at the
time, and knowing what to expect if the river was followed down again,
the party halted and formed a camp.

The next day Sturt, Hume, and two men crossed the river and made a short
journey of investigation to the west, to see what fortune held for them
further afield. Not having passed during the day "a drop of water or a
blade of grass," they found themselves by mid-afternoon on a wide plain
that stretched far away to the horizon. Sturt writes that had there been
the slightest encouragement afforded by any change in the country, he
would even then have pushed forward, "but we had left all traces of the
natives behind us, and this seemed a desert they never entered -- that
not even a bird inhabited."

Back to Mount Harris once more, where they arrived on the 7th of April,
1829. On their way they had stopped to follow a depression first noticed
by Hume, and decided that it was the channel of the overflow of the
Macquarie Marshes.

6.3. THE PASSAGE OF THE MURRAY.

The mystery of the Macquarie was now, to a certain extent, cleared away,
but the course and final outlet of the Darling now presented another
riddle, which Sturt too was destined to solve.

The discovery of such a large river as the Darling, augmented by the
Macquarie and Castlereagh, and (so people then thought) in all
probability the Lachlan, naturally inflamed public curiosity as to the
position of the outlet on the Australian coast. All the rivers that had
been tried as guides to the hidden interior having failed to answer the
purpose, the Murrumbidgee -- the beautiful river of the aboriginals --
was selected as the scene of the next attempt. There were good reasons
for the choice: it derived its volume from the highest known mountains,
snow-capped peaks in fact, that reminded the spectator of far northern
latitudes, and thus it was to a great extent independent of the variable
local rainfall.

Captain Sturt was naturally selected to be the leader of the Murrumbidgee
expedition, and with him as second went George MacLeay, the son of the
then Colonial Secretary. Harris, who had been Sturt's soldier-servant for
nearly eighteen years, and two other men of the 39th, who had been with
their Captain on the Ma