come to an end. Why,
it was never generally known. Thus there still remained a vast unknown
expanse right in the heart of the interior covering 150,000 square miles,
bounded on the North by Warburton's Great Sandy Desert, on the South by
Giles's Desert of Gravel (Gibson's Desert), on the West by the strip
of well-watered country between the coast and the highland in which the
rivers rise, on the East by nothing but the imaginary boundary-line
between West and South Australia, and beyond by the Adelaide to Port
Darwin Telegraph Line.

To penetrate into this great unknown it would be necessary first to pass
over the inhospitable regions described by Wells, Forrest, and Giles, and
the unmapped expanses between their several routes--crossing their tracks
almost at right angles, and deriving no benefit from their experiences
except a comparison in positions on the chart, should the point of
intersection occur at any recognisable feature, such as a noticeable hill
or lake.

Should the unexplored part between Giles's and Warburton's routes be
successfully crossed, there still would remain an unexplored tract 150
miles broad by 450 long before the settlements in Kimberley could be
reached, 1,000 miles in a bee-line from Coolgardie. This was the
expedition I had mapped out for my undertaking, and now after four
years' hard struggle I had at length amassed sufficient means to carry it
through. I do not wish to pose as a hero who risked the perils and dangers
of the desert in the cause of science, any more than I would wish it to be
thought that I had no more noble idea than the finding of gold. Indeed,
one cannot tell one's own motives sometimes; in my case, however, I
believe an insatiable curiosity to "know what was there," joined to a
desire to be doing something useful to my fellow-men, was my chief
incentive. I had an idea that a mountain range similar to, but of course
of less extent, than the McDonnell Ranges in Central Australia might be
found--an idea based on the fact that the vast swamps or salt-lakes, Lake
Amadeus and Lake Macdonald, which apparently have no creeks to feed them
from the East, must necessarily be filled from somewhere. Since it was
not from the East, why not from the West?

Tietkens, Giles's first officer in nearly all his journeys, who led an
expedition from Alice Springs in Central Australia to determine the extent
of Lake Amadeus, cut off a considerable portion of that lake's supposed
area, and