Australia Twice Traversed | Page 2

embodying the whole of my explorations might be acceptable to both English and Colonial readers.
Some years have been allowed to elapse since these journeys were commenced; but the facts are the same, and to those not mixed up in the adventures, the incidents as fresh as when they occurred.
Unavoidably, I have had to encounter a large area of desert country in the interior of the colonies of South Australia, and Western Australia, in my various wanderings; but I also discovered considerable tracts of lands watered and suitable for occupation.
It is not in accordance with my own feelings in regard to Australia that I am the chronicler of her poorer regions; and although an Englishman, Australia has no sincerer well-wisher; had it been otherwise, I could not have performed the work these volumes record. It has indeed been often a cause of regret that my lines of march should have led me away from the beautiful and fertile places upon Australia's shores, where our countrymen have made their homes.
On the subject of the wonderful resources of Australia I am not called upon to enlarge, and surely all who have heard her name must have heard also of her gold, copper, wool, wine, beef, mutton, wheat, timber, and other products; and if any other evidence were wanting to show what Australia really is, a visit to her cities, and an experience of her civilisation, not forgetting the great revenues of her different provinces, would dispel at once all previous inaccurate impressions of those who, never having seen, perhaps cannot believe in the existence of them.
In the course of this work my reader will easily discover to whom it is dedicated, without a more formal statement under such a heading. The preface, which may seem out of its place, is merely such to my own journeys. I thought it due to my readers and my predecessors in the Australian field of discovery, that I should give a rapid epitome (which may contain some minor errors) of what they had done, and which is here put forward by way of introduction.
Most of the illustrations, except one or two photographs, were originally from very rough sketches, or I might rather say scratches, of mine, improved upon by Mr. Val Prinsep, of Perth, Western Australia, who drew most of the plates referring to the camel expeditions, while those relating to the horse journeys were sketched by Mr. Woodhouse, Junr., of Melbourne; the whole, however, have undergone a process of reproduction at the hands of London artists.
To Mrs. Cashel Hoey, the well-known authoress and Australian correspondent, who revised and cleared my original manuscripts, I have to accord my most sincere thanks. To Mr. Henniker-Heaton, M.P., who appears to be the Imperial Member in the British Parliament for all Australia, I am under great obligations, he having introduced me to Mr. Marston, of the publishing firm who have produced these volumes. I also have to thank Messrs. Clowes and Sons for the masterly way in which they have printed this work. Also Messrs. Creed, Robinson, Fricker, and Symons, of the publishing staff. The maps have been reproduced by Weller, the well-known geographer.
(ILLUSTRATION: Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society of London. "Victoria D.G. Britanniarum Regina, 1837, Patrona. Or, Terras Reclusas, Ernest Giles, 1880.")
INTRODUCTION.
Before narrating my own labours in opening out portions of the unknown interior of Australia, it will be well that I should give a succinct account of what others engaged in the same arduous enterprise around the shores and on the face of the great Southern Continent, have accomplished.
After the wondrous discoveries of Columbus had set the Old World into a state of excitement, the finding of new lands appears to have become the romance of that day, as the exploration by land of unknown regions has been that of our time; and in less than fifty years after the discovery of America navigators were searching every sea in hopes of emulating the deeds of that great explorer; but nearly a hundred years elapsed before it became known in Europe that a vast and misty land existed in the south, whose northern and western shores had been met in certain latitudes and longitudes, but whose general outline had not been traced, nor was it even then visited with anything like a systematic geographical object. The fact of the existence of such a land at the European antipodes no doubt set many ardent and adventurous spirits upon the search, but of their exploits and labours we know nothing.
The Dutch were the most eager in their attempts, although Torres, a Spaniard, was, so far as we know, the first to pass in a voyage from the West Coast of America to India, between the Indian or Malay Islands, and the great continent to the south, hence we have