write
over again. He says that there are high ranges to N. and N.W. and
water,--a sea extending along the horizon from S.W. by W., to ten E. of
N. in which there are a number of islands and lofty ranges as far as the
eye can reach. What is all this? Are we to be prosperous? I hope so; and
I am sure you do. To-morrow we start for the ranges, and then for the
waters,--the strange waters on which boat never swam, and over which flag
never floated. But both shall are long. We have the heart of the interior
laid open to us, and shall be off with a flowing sheet in a few days.
Poole says that the sea was a deep blue, and that in the midst of it
there was a conical island of great height. When will you hear from me
again?"

From this communication, Captain Sturt appears to be sanguine of having
realized the long hoped for sea, and at last of having found a key to the
centre of the continent. Most sincerely do I hope that this may be the
case, and that the next accounts may more than confirm such satisfactory
intelligence.

My own impressions were always decidedly opposed to the idea of an inland
sea, nor have I changed them in the least, now that circumstances
amounting almost to proof, seem to favour that opinion.

Entertaining, as I do, the highest respect for the opinion of one so
every way capable of forming a correct judgment as Captain Sturt, it is
with considerable diffidence that I advance any conjectures in opposition
to his, and especially so, as I may be thought presumptuous in doing so
in the face of the accounts received. Until these accounts, however, are
further confirmed, the question still remains as it was; and it may
perhaps not be out of place to allude to some of the reasons which have
led me to form an opinion somewhat different from that entertained by
Captain Sturt, and which I have been compelled to arrive at after a long
personal experience, a closer approach to the interior, and a more
extensive personal examination of the continent, than any other traveller
has hitherto made. In the course of that experience, I have never met
with the slightest circumstance to lead me to imagine that there should
be an inland sea, still less a deep navigable one, and having an outer
communication with the ocean. I can readily suppose, and, in fact, I do
so believe, that a considerable portion of the interior consists of the
beds or basins of salt lakes or swamps, as Lake Torrens, and some of
which might be of g