Government a weekly allowance of provisions, [Note 29: This was
confirmed by Governor Hutt.] by order of Mr. Phillips; who promised to
recommend that it should be permanently continued, as a reward for the
fidelity and good conduct he had displayed whilst accompanying me in
the desert.

On the 13th July I wished my friends good bye, and in the afternoon went
on board the Truelove to sail for Adelaide; whilst working out of harbour
we were accompanied as long as any of the shore boats remained, by some
of the natives of the place, who were most anxious to have gone with me
to Adelaide. Wylie had given them so flattering an account of South
Australia and its pleasures, that he had excited the envy and curiosity
of the whole tribe; dozens applied to me to take them, and I really think
I could have filled the ship had I been disposed; one or two, more
persevering than the rest, would not be denied, and stuck close to the
vessel to the last, in the hope that I might relent and take them with me
before the pilot boat left, but upon this occurring, to their great
discomforture, they were compelled to return disappointed.

On the afternoon of the 26th of July I arrived in Adelaide, after an
absence of one year and twenty-six days.

Chapter VI.

CONCLUDING REMARKS.

Having now brought to a close the narrative of my explorations in 1840-1,
it may not be out of place to take a brief and cursory review of the
whole, and to state generally what have been the results effected. In
making this summary, I have no important rivers to enumerate, no fertile
regions to point out for the future spread of colonization and
civilization, or no noble ranges to describe from which are washed the
debris that might form a rich and fertile district beneath them; on the
contrary, all has been arid and barren in the extreme.

Such, indeed, has been the sterile and desolate character of the
wilderness I have traversed, and so great have been the difficulties
thereby entailed upon me, that throughout by far the greater portion of
it, I have never been able to delay a moment in my route, or to deviate
in any way from the line I was pursuing, to reconnoitre or examine what
may haply be beyond. Even in the latter part of my travels, when within
the colony of Western Australia, and when the occasionally meeting with
tracts of a better soil, or with watercourses appearing to have an outlet
to the ocean, rendered the country one of much grea