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ROE, GREY, AND GREGORY.
17.1.ROE AND THE PIONEERS.
Whilst Sturt and kindred bold spirits had been painfully but surely piecing together the geographical puzzle of the south-east corner of the Australian continent, a similar struggle between man and Nature had commenced in the south-west.

Here, Nature kept close her secrets with no less pertinacity than in the east; but, though the struggle was just as arduous, the environment was very different.

Instead of rearing an unscalable barrier of gloomy mountains, Nature here showed a level front of sullen hostility.

Nor did she lure the first explorers inland with a smiling face of welcome once the outworks had been forced, as she had drawn Evans when he reached the head-waters of the Macquarie and Lachlan.
Beyond the sources of the western coastal streams, she fought silently for every eastward mile of vantage ground, spreading before the adventurous intruder the salt lake and the arid desert.
As far back as 1791, George Vancouver, a whilom middy of Cook's, discovered and named King George's Sound, when in command of H.M.S.
Discovery.