rker's
Knoll--under which the excellent and amiable officer after whom it is
named fell by the hands of the natives, in the cause of geographical
research.

Running parallel with its course from the southerly bend, or great N.W.
angle of the Murray, there is a line of hills, terminating southwards, at
Cape Jarvis; but, extending northwards beyond the head of Spencer's Gulf.
These hills contain the mineral wealth of South Australia, and
immediately to the westward of them is the fair city of Adelaide.

On gaining the level interior, the Murray passes through a desert country
to the 140 degrees meridian, when it enters the great fossil formation,
of which I shall have to speak hereafter. In lat. 34 degrees, and in
long. 142 degrees, the Darling forms a junction with it; consequently, as
that river rises in latitude 27 degrees, and in long. 152 degrees, its
direct course will be about S.W. There is a distance of nine degrees of
latitude, therefore, between their respective sources, and, as the
Darling forms a considerable angle with the Murray at this junction, it
necessarily follows, as I have had occasion to remark, that the two
rivers must receive all the drainage from the eastward, falling into that
angle. If I have been sufficiently clear in explaining the geographical
position and character of these two rivers, which in truth almost make an
island of the S.E. angle of the Australian continent, it will only remain
for me to add in this place, that neither the Murray nor the Darling
receive any tributary stream from the westward or northward, and at the
time at which I commenced my last enterprise, the Darling was the
boundary of inland discovery, if I except the journey of my gallant
friend Eyre, to Lake Torrens, and the discovery by him of the country
round Mount Serle. Sir Thomas Mitchell had traced the Darling, from the
point at which I had been obliged from the want of good water to abandon
it, in 1828, to lat. 32 degrees 26 minutes, and had marked down some
hills to the westward of it. Still I do not think that I detract from his
merit, and I am sure I do not wish to do so, when I say that his having
so marked them can hardly be said to have given us any certain knowledge
of the Cis-Darling interior.

More than sixteen years had elapsed from the period when I undertook the
exploration of the Murray River, to that at which I commenced my
preparations for an attempt to penetrate Central Australia. Desolate,
howe