Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 November 1891 — THE LOST OASIS FOUND. [ARTICLE]

THE LOST OASIS FOUND.

Explorer* Had Looked for It la Tain E.er Since Giles Discovered It. In 1875, when Mr. E. Giles made his famous journey across the Southern part of Australia, traveling through deserts that had never been visited before, he discovered a place that was green and fertile. This oasis in the desert was the result of some springs which came to the surface therfe and gave the country for a long distance around the aspect of rich and verdant agricultural lands. He named the place Victoria Spring, and when he came home he said many thousauds of cattle or sheep* could be raised there. He had nowhere seen more promising grazing land than this oasis. Curiously enough, he did not accurately define the position of Victoria Spring. Ever since his journey the place has been marked upon the maps, but several explorers who tried to find Victoria Spring have failed, and some critics were unkind enough to intimate that the oasis had: existed only in the imagination of the man who described it. The news comes now from Australia that Victoria Spring has been discovered again. Mr. J. P. Brooks writes from Israelite Bay to Baron von. Muller,, who is well known for his important labors in behalf of Australian exploration, that a Swede named Frank Neuman has found Victoria Spring. The letter says that the spring is 135 miles 'north of the Frazer range of mountains, in the southern part of West Australia, and that hereafter this oasis may be easily reached from the south coast. Neuman says, as Giles reported earlier, that animal life is abundant, that, there is a fine growth of grass, and that about 4,000 acres are splendidly adapted for sheep or cattle raising. In fact, it is a very beautiful and fertile oasis in the midst o*a sea of sand which will never be turned to any profitable account. But the most curious thing about Victoria Spring is that although all the maps have shown it where it was supposed Giles found the spring, no one was ever able to run across it during the sixteen years since he discovered it until the present time. As near as can be ascertained he located it about fifty miles from its position, and no subse- . quent traveler has ever happened to. see it.