calculating machine. He had been educated as an engineer, and for a
considerable time had followed his profession in Europe. He had been
engaged on several main lines in England, and had worked in conjunction
with the celebrated Brunel. He had also been commissioned by the
Government of Piedmont to report on a line across the Alps by way of
Mount Cenis. He had remained in Italy some years until his work was
interrupted by the revolution. He had returned to England, and had
subsequently come to South Australia in 1851, in the ship Hydaspes. He
died at his residence, in 1878, at St. Mary's, South Road, where he had a
vineyard.

13.2. JOHN MCDOUALL STUART.

[Illustration. John McDouall Stuart.]

John McDouall Stuart, the great explorer of the centre of Australia,
arrived in South Australia in 1839. His first experience of Australian
exploration was sufficiently trying, gained as it was when he was acting
as a draughtsman with Captain Sturt on his last arduous expedition. But
it had kindled in him a high ardour for discovery, and fostered a
stubborn resolution to carry through whatever he undertook.

He commenced his early explorations when in a position to do so
independently, to the north-west of Swinden's country, in search of some
locality called by the natives Wingillpin. Not finding it, he came to the
strange conclusion that Wingillpin and Cooper's Creek were one and the
same, although he was now on a different watershed. He also, at that
period, seems to have entertained somewhat extensive notions of the
course of Cooper's Creek, as in one part of his Journal he remarks:--

"My only hope of cutting Cooper's Creek is on the other side of the
range. The plain we crossed to-day resembles those of the Cooper, also
the grasses. If it is not there, it must run to the north-west, and form
the Glenelg of Captain Grey."

Now, although we know that Grey held rather extravagant notions of the
importance of the Glenelg, even he would not have thought it possible for
the Glenelg to be the outlet of such a mighty river as Cooper's Creek
would have become by the time it reached the north-west coast.

Stuart's horses were now too footsore to proceed over the stony country
he found himself then in, and he had no spare shoes with him. Failing
therefore to find the promised land of Wingillpin, although he had passed
over much good and well-watered country, he turned to the south-west, and
made some explorations in the neighbourh