What Captain Sturt will understand as absolutely prohibited, is any attempt to conduct his party through the tropical regions to the northward, so as to reach the mouths of any of the great rivers.

The present expedition will be limited in its object, to ascertaining the existence and the character of a supposed chain of hills, or a succession of separate hills, trending down from N.E.to S.W., and forming a great natural division of the continent; to examining what rivers take their source in those mountains, and what appears to be their course; to the general lie of the country to the N.W.of the supposed chain; and to the character of the soil and forests, as far as can be ascertained by such an investigation as shall not draw the party away from their resources, and shall make the south the constant base of their operations." I presume, from the tenor of Sir John Barrow's memorandum, that he was not fully aware of the insurmountable difficulties the course he recommends presented.

Valuing his judgment as I did on such an occasion, and anxious as I was to act on the suggestions of the Secretary of State, the strongest grounds could alone have made me pursue a course different to that which had been recommended to me.

Certainly the fear of any ordinary difficulty would not have influenced me to reject the line pointed out, but I felt satisfied that if Lord Stanley and Sir John Barrow could be made aware of the nature of the country to the north of Mount Arden, and the reasons why I considered it would be more advantageous to take the line of the Darling, they would have concurred in opinion with me.

I would myself much rather have taken the line by Mount Arden, since it would have been a greater novelty, and I would have precluded the chance of any collision with the natives of the Darling, more especially at that point to which I proposed to go, and at which Sir Thomas Mitchell had had a rupture with them in 1836.