e crew, and the rage of the natives was
turned to admiration as they watched the white men paddling on their
great river while some seventy black men swam off to the boat like
"a parcel of seals."

The explorers now found a new and beautiful stream flowing into the
Murray from the north, up which the boat was now turned, natives
anxiously following along the grassy banks, till suddenly a net
stretched across the stream checked their course. Sturt instinctively
felt he was on the river Darling again. "I directed that the Union
Jack should be hoisted, and we all stood up in the boat and gave three
distinct cheers. The eye of every native was fixed upon that beautiful
flag as it waved over us in the heart of a desert."

While they were still watching, Sturt turned the head of the boat and
pursued his way down the great Murray River. Stormy weather at the
end of January set in; though they were yet one hundred and fifteen
miles from the coast, the river increased in breadth, cliffs towered
above them, and the water dashed like sea-waves at their base.

On the 5th of February they were cheered by the appearance of sea-gulls
and a heavy swell up the river, which they knew must be nearing the
sea. On the twenty-third day of their voyage they entered a great lake.
Crossing to the southern shore, they found to their bitter grief that
shoals and sandbanks made it impossible for them to reach the sea.
They found that the Murray flowed into Encounter Bay, but thither they
could not pass. The thunder of the surf upon the shore brought no hope
to the tired explorers. They had no alternative but to turn back and
retrace their way. Terrible was the task that lay before them. On
half-rations and with hostile natives to encounter they must fight
their way against wind and stream. And they did it. They reached the
camp on the Murrumbidgee just seventy-seven days after leaving it;
but to their dismay it was deserted. The river, too, had risen in flood
and "poured its turbid waters with great violence."

[Illustration: CAPTAIN STURT AT THE JUNCTION OF THE RIVERS DARLING
AND MURRAY. From the _Narrative of Sturt's Expedition_.]

"For seventeen days," says Sturt, "we pulled against stream with
determined perseverance, but in our short daily journeys we made but
trifling way against it." The effects of severe toil were painfully
evident. The men lost the muscular jerk with the oars. Their arms were
nerveless, their faces haggard, their per