aracter of the
country proposed to be traversed, induced many to regard the scheme as
one characterised by rashness, and the means employed as wholly
inadequate towards carrying out the object in view. Many withheld their
support from a dread lest they might be held as chargeable with that
result which their sinister forebodings told them was all but inevitable
with a small but adventurous band. You nevertheless plunged into the
unknown regions that lay before you. After the lapse of a few months
without any tidings of your progress or fate, the notion became generally
entertained that your party had fallen victims to some one of the many
dangers it had been your lot to encounter; that you had perished by the
hands of the hostile natives of the interior; that want of water or
exposure to tropical climate were even but a few of the many evils to
which you had rendered yourself liable, and to the influence of some one
or more of which it was but too probable you had fallen a prey. Two
parties successively went out with the hope of overtaking you, or at
least of ascertaining some particulars of your fate. The result of these
efforts was, however, fruitless, and but few were so sanguine as to
believe in the possibility of you or your comrades being still in
existence. I need not recall to the recollection of those here present,
the surprise, the enthusiasm, and the delight, with which your sudden
appearance in Sydney was hailed, about six months ago. The surprise was
about equal to what might be felt at seeing one who had risen from the
tomb; a surprise, however, that was equalled by the warm and cordial
welcome with which you were embraced by every colonist; and when we
listened to the narrative of your long and dreary journey--the hardships
you had endured, the dangers you had braved, the difficulties you had
surmounted--the feeling with which your return amongst us was greeted,
became one of universal enthusiasm. For it would indeed be difficult to
point out, in the career of any traveller, the accomplishment of an
equally arduous undertaking, or one pregnant with more important results,
whether we contemplate them in a scientific, an economical, or a political
point of view. The traversing, for the first time by civilised man, of so
large a portion of the surface of this island, could not fail to be
attended with many discoveries deeply interesting to the scientific
inquirer, in botany, geology, and zoology. Your contribu