nds it. His duty is to penetrate
it, and although the greatest honour is awarded and the greatest
recompense given to the discoverer of the finest regions, yet it must
be borne in mind, that the difficulties of traversing those regions
cannot be nearly so great as those encountered by the less fortunate
traveller who finds himself surrounded by heartless deserts. The
successful penetration of such a region must, nevertheless, have its
value, both in a commercial and a geographical sense, as it points out
to the future emigrant or settler, those portions of our continent
which he should rigorously avoid. It never could have entered into any
one's calculations that I should have to force my way through a region
that rolls its scrub-enthroned, and fearful distance out, for hundreds
of leagues in billowy undulations, like the waves of a timbered sea,
and that the expedition would have to bore its way, like moles in the
earth, for so long, through these interminable scrubs, with nothing to
view, and less to cheer. Our success has traced a long and a dreary
road through this unpeopled waste, like that to a lion's abode, from
whence no steps are retraced. The caravan for months was slowly but
surely plodding on, under those trees with which it has pleased
Providence to bedeck this desolate waste. But this expedition, as
organised, equipped, and intended by Sir Thomas Elder, was a thing of
such excellence and precision, it moved along apparently by mechanical
action; and it seemed to me, as we conquered these frightful deserts
by its power, like playing upon some new fine instrument, as we
wandered, like rumour, "from the Orient to the Drooping West,"--

"From where the Torrens wanders,
'Midst corn and vines and flowers,
To where fair Perth still lifts to heaven
Her diadem of towers."

The labours of the expedition ended only at the sea at Fremantle, the
seaport of the west; and after travelling under those trees for
months, from eastern lands through a region accurst, we were greeted
at last by old Ocean's roar; Ocean, the strongest of creation's sons,
"that rolls the wild, profound, eternal bass in Nature's anthem." The
officers, Mr. Tietkens and Mr. Young, except for occasional outbursts
of temper, and all the other members of the expedition, acted in every
way so as to give me satisfaction; and when I say that the personnel
of the expedition behaved as well as the camels, I cannot formulate
greater praise.