“P.S.  Poole has just returned from the ranges.  I have not time to write over again.  He says that there are high ranges to N. and N.W. and water,—­a sea extending along the horizon from S.W. by W., to ten E. of N. in which there are a number of islands and lofty ranges as far as the eye can reach.  What is all this?  Are we to be prosperous?  I hope so; and I am sure you do.  To-morrow we start for the ranges, and then for the waters,—­the strange waters on which boat never swam, and over which flag never floated.  But both shall are long.  We have the heart of the interior laid open to us, and shall be off with a flowing sheet in a few days.  Poole says that the sea was a deep blue, and that in the midst of it there was a conical island of great height.  When will you hear from me again?”

From this communication, Captain Sturt appears to be sanguine of having realized the long hoped for sea, and at last of having found a key to the centre of the continent.  Most sincerely do I hope that this may be the case, and that the next accounts may more than confirm such satisfactory intelligence.

My own impressions were always decidedly opposed to the idea of an inland sea, nor have I changed them in the least, now that circumstances amounting almost to proof, seem to favour that opinion.

Entertaining, as I do, the highest respect for the opinion of one so every way capable of forming a correct judgment as Captain Sturt, it is with considerable diffidence that I advance any conjectures in opposition to his, and especially so, as I may be thought presumptuous in doing so in the face of the accounts received.  Until these accounts, however, are further confirmed, the question still remains as it was; and it may perhaps not be out of place to allude to some of the reasons which have led me to form an opinion somewhat different from that entertained by Captain Sturt, and which I have been compelled to arrive at after a long personal experience, a closer approach to the interior, and a more extensive personal examination of the continent, than any other traveller has hitherto made.  In the course of that experience, I have never met with the slightest circumstance to lead me to imagine that there should be an inland sea, still less a deep navigable one, and having an outer communication with the ocean.  I can readily suppose, and, in fact, I do so believe, that a considerable portion of the interior consists of the beds or basins of salt lakes or swamps, as Lake Torrens, and some of which might be of great extent.  I think, also, that these alternate, with sandy deserts, and that probably at intervals, there are many isolated ranges, like the Gawler range, and which, perhaps, even in some places may form a connection of links across the continent, could any favourable point be obtained for commencing the examination.

It is very possible that among these ranges, intervals of a better or even of a rich and fertile country might be met with.