PRESIDENT S ADDRESS. / 10 



expeditions hereafter mentioned ; for, with well provisioned ships 

 to fall back upon, and to store the treasures collected, the 

 explorers enjoyed most of the comforts to which they had always 

 been accustomed. It was a very different thing when, instead 

 of merely skirting the coast, they pushed boldly into the 

 mysterious unknown heart of the country, which hurled defiance 

 at the puny invaders of its vast dreary solitudes ; but the spirit 

 of enterprise, insuppressible in the Anglo-Saxon race, impelled 

 its members from time to time to press forward into the vast 

 unknown, with their lives in their hands, and, notwithstanding 

 failure succeeded by failure, fresh victims were always ready to 

 take the places of those who had failed ; ultimately perseverance 

 and pluck were crowned with success, in spite of the mereiless 

 attacks of unfeeling savages, in spite of cruel thirst often pro- 

 longed for days together under a burning sun, and in spite of 

 hunger, often allayed only by killing their cattle, horses and 

 camels, reduced to skeletons, as these poor animals were, when 

 the time for their sacrifice had arrived. In illustration of the 

 distress to which explorers were sometimes reduced for want of 

 food, I may mention that on one occasion Ernest Giles, being 

 alone in the desert, and on the very verge of starvation, heard a 

 faint squeak, and immediately saw and pounced like an eagle 

 upon a dying wallaby, and ate it "living, raw, dying, fur, skin, 

 bones, skull, and all," and thought he should never forget the 

 delicious taste of that creature weighing about two ounces, and 

 he could not help wishing that he had its mother and father to 

 serve in the same way. 



In 1840, Captain Eyre's perilous journey from Adelaide to 

 Swan River produced little more than negative botanical results, 

 as there appeared to be, between Streaky Bay and Lucky Bay, 

 scarcely any vegetation at all. He was accompanied by an over- 

 seer and three black l>oys, two of whom, during his temporary 

 absence, plundered the camp, shot the overseer, and decamped ; 

 but with the remaining boy, he managed, af cer terrible hardships, 

 to reach his destination. 



