BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 657 



in a North West direction, nor to carry those epistles which I 

 should have enjoyed to address to you. Thank God, my efforts 

 have met with success, and I was preserved in the hours of 

 danger. I arrived at Port Essington on the 17th December, 

 1845, staid there till the 17th January, 1846, and then re- 

 turned to Sydney, accompanied by my party; all safe, 

 except the unfortunate Mr. Gilbert. We came home in the 

 " Heroine," Captain Mackenzie. You may easily suppose 

 that I lost no opportunity of making botanical collections, 

 and the length of time during which I was absent, between 

 fourteen and fifteen months, enabled me to do so very com- 

 pletely and satisfactorily. The two Floras (that of the 

 Eastern interior and of the Gulf of Carpentaria, including 

 Anheim's Land), were presented to me in a successive state 

 of flower, fruit and seed. As my specimens increased, I 

 enveloped the different packages with raw hides, which, when 

 dry, formed a complete kind of box around them, securing 

 the contents, alike from weather and from the rough treat- 

 ment to which they were occasionally exposed. But you 

 must bear this in mind, my good friend, that it was not my 

 lot to travel all at my ease, with every convenience at hand a 

 and enabled to devote my whole attention to Natural His- 

 tory. On the contrary, I was compelled to do everything; I 

 was alike leader of the party and bullock driver, and I had to 

 load and unload three beasts of burthen, often several times 

 in the day. All the cares of such a position were laid upon 

 me ; mine were the anxieties during the hour of difficulty and 

 peril. To arrange our camp, deal out provision, kill the bul- 

 locks, and mend the harness, to compile the log and day-book 

 of our route, to determine the latitude and longitude, and to keep 

 nightly watch, all these various and ever-recurring occupations 

 devolved upon me. Thus, even allowing that I did my very 

 best, it is undeniable that a man, whose attention was less 

 divided, could have effected infinitely more in any one depart- 

 ment than I did. Gladly would I have made drawings of my 

 plants, and noted fully all particulars of the different species 

 which I saw ; and how valuable would such memoranda have 



