oria, struck the N. E.
tributary about three miles above its junction with the main stream, and
fording at that point, kept on the proper right bank of the Victoria.

"At about a mile," says Mr. Kennedy, "it (the Victoria) there turns to
the S.S.W. and south, spreading over a depressed and barren waste, void
of trees or vegetation of any kind, its level surface being only broken
by small doones of red sand, like islands upon the dry bed of an inland
sea, which I am convinced at no distant period did exist there."

There cannot, I think, be any reasonable doubt, but that Mr. Kennedy had
here reached the edge of the great central desert.

Both the river he was tracing, and the country were precisely similar in
character to Cooper's Creek, and the country I had so long been wandering
over. The former at one point having a fine deep channel, at another
split into numberless small branches, and then spreading over some
extensive level without the vestige of a water-course upon it. The
country monotonous and sterile, its level only broken by low sandstone
hills, or doones of sand, the whole bearing in its general appearance the
stamp of a submarine origin.

Mr. Kennedy's last camp on the Victoria was in lat. 26 degrees 13 minutes
9 seconds S. and in long. 142 degrees 20 minutes E.; the most eastern
point of Cooper's Creek gained by me was in lat. 27 degrees 46 minutes S.
and long. 141 degrees 51 minutes E. This longitude, however, was by
account, and I may have thrown it some few miles to the eastward; in like
manner Mr. Kennedy's longitude being also by account, I believe he may
have placed his camp a little to the west of its true position; but, as
the two points are now laid down, there is a distance of 98 geographical
miles between them, on a bearing of 13 degrees to the east of north.
Admitting the identity of the Victoria with Cooper's Creek, of which I do
not think there is the slightest doubt, the course of the former in order
to join the latter would be south, 13 degrees W. the very course Mr.
Kennedy states it had apparently taken up when he left it. "The lowest
camp on the Victoria," he says, "was in lat. 26 degrees 13 minutes 9
seconds, and in long. 142 degrees 20 minutes, the river in several
channels trending due south." If such is the case I must have
misunderstood the signs of the natives, and been mistaken in my
supposition that the vast basin into which I traced it, was the basin of
Cooper's Creek, but I