Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/610

higher sense of duty among officials. The emancipist and self-styled patriot party turned savagely on the Governor, and Dr. Wardell and William Wentworth ere long vented their fury in the columns of the Australian. After this introduction of the Governor, the progress of discovery during his rule must be alluded to.

In 1827, Allan Cunningham combined his botanical researches with exploration. He traversed with six men the affluents of the Nammoy and the Gwydir, discovered Darling Downs, and returned to his starting-point at the head of the Hunter river. Two years afterwards he went. to Moreton Bay by sea; and exploring the sources of the Brisbane river, connected his two expeditions, and named Cunningham's (Pass or) Gap in the cordillera near Darling Downs. Darling selected, for the command of another exploring party, Captain Charles Sturt of H.M. 39th Regiment. With this leader Mr. Hamilton Hume was associated. In a time of drought (1828) they started for the interior, in which Oxley had found marshes and expanse of water. They found a waste of dry polygonum scrub with patches of reeds and a small muddy channel to which the Macquarie had dwindled. An attempt by Sturt to follow its course failed. Hume made excursions, and after much hardship the explorers suddenly came upon a large river, which they named the Darling. To their horror they found the water salt. They were in sore straits for themselves and their cattle; and the unerring skill of Hume was never more welcome than when he discovered, not far from their camp, a pool of fresh water which relieved their distress. Striking the Darling in long. 145.33 E., lat. 29.37 S., they descended many miles without finding any alteration in the character of the river. They turned northwards, and again encountered the Darling, salt as before. After four months and a half they returned, having ascertained that the Macquarie and Castlereagh rivers, and, inferentially, the Nammoy, Gwydir, and the Darling Down rivers, flowed into this new great river, now called the Darling, below the confluence of the rivers converging from the slopes of the cordillera.

Sturt was again commissioned in 1829 to explore the more southern rivers. The Lachlan had been essayed vainly by Oxley. Sturt sought the Murrumbidgee, whose