ed in lat. 14 degrees 26 minutes
S. and long. 129 {139 in published text} degrees 22 minutes E., the other
in lat. 17 degrees 35 minutes and long. 139 degrees 54 minutes;
but in tracing these up to lat. 15 degrees 30 minutes and 17 degrees
58 minutes, and long. 130 degrees 50 minutes and 139 degrees
28 minutes respectively, no elevated mountains were seen, nor
was any opening discovered into the interior. Captain Wickham
having retired, the command of the Beagle devolved on Lieut. now
Captain Stokes, to whose searching eye the whole of the coast was more or
less subjected, and who approached nearer to the centre than any one had
ever done before [Note 6. below], but still no light was thrown on
that hidden region; and the efforts which had been made both on land and
by water, were, strictly speaking, unsuccessful, to push to any conclusive
distance from the settled districts on the one hand, or from the coast
into the interior on the other. Reasoning was lost in conjecture, and men,
even those most interested in it, ceased to talk on the subject.

[Note 6. Discoveries in Australia, and Expeditions into the Interior,
surveyed during the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, between the years 1837
and 43, by Captain J. Lort Stokes.]

It may not be of any moment to the public to be made acquainted with the
cause which led me, after a repose of more than fourteen years, to seek
the field of discovery once more. It will be readily admitted, that from
the part, as I have observed in my preface, which I had ever taken in the
progress of Geographical Discovery on the Australian continent, I must
have been deeply interested in its further developement.

I had adopted an impression, that this immense tract of land had formerly
been an archipelago of islands, and that the apparently boundless plains
into which I had descended on my former expeditions, were, or rather had
been, the sea-beds of the channels, which at that time separated one
island from the other; it was impossible, indeed, to traverse them as I
had done, and not feel convinced that they had at one period or the other
been covered by the waters of the sea. It naturally struck me, that if I
was correct in this conjecture, the difficulty or facility with which the
interior might be penetrated, would entirely depend on the breadth and
extent of these once submarine plains, which in such case would now
separate the available parts of the continent from each another, as when
covered