154 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [April, 



Society, for their extensive researches and determinations of longi- 

 tude and latitude in Northern, Eastern, and Western Austraha. 

 Whilst more recently, the bold expedition of Burk and Wills cost 

 these noble fellows their lives, the latest researches of their suc- 

 cessors stand out as indeed most singularly successful. M'Douall 

 Stuart, after various previous triumphs, in one of which he reached 

 the watershed of North x\ustralia, has actually passed from Ade- 

 laide, in South Australia, to Van Dieraan Bay on the north coast, 

 in latitude 15 deg. S. Contemporaneously with this last expedi- 

 tion, M'Kinlay, proceeding also from Adelaide, reached the Gulf 

 of Carpentaria, and thence travelled to the eastern shore ; and 

 Landsborougb, realizing all the value of the discoveries of Burk 

 and Wills, and penetrating from the Gulf of Carpentaria, traversed 

 the continent southward until he regained the noble colony of 

 Victoria, in which the expedition was organized. The rapid rise 

 of the different colonies in Australia is truly marvellous ; and 

 whilst we have successfully occupied all the available ports and 

 lands along the eastern, southern, and western sides of this great 

 continent, we are, I rejoice to say, now beginning to extend our 

 settlements to the north coast, the occupation of which I have 

 advocated for many a year, on political as well as on commercial 

 and colonial grounds A few years only of practical researches 

 have dispelled our ignorance respecting the interior of this vast 

 mass of land ; in which, though there are wild desert tracks, there 

 are also many rich and well-watered oases of fine pasture-grounds, 

 through which the colonists may open out communications across 

 the continent froin the south and east to the northern shores. A 

 short time only, I venture to predict, will elapse before towns arise 

 at the head of the Gulf of Carpentaria, as well as at the mouth of 

 the Victoria River of the north ; from whence, as well as from the 

 new settlement of Cape York, Australia will have a direct com- 

 munication with our great Indian Empire." 



Referring to the discovery of the sources of the Nile, the Presi- 

 dent remarked upon the fact that "traveller after traveller, from 

 the da3^s of the Egyptian priests and of the Roman emperors down 

 to modern periods, had endeavored to ascend the Nile to its 

 source, and all had failed " ; and that it was by reversing the pro- 

 cess, and by proceeding from the east coast of Africa, near Zanzi- 

 bar, to the central plateau land between North and South Africa, 

 that Captains Speke and Grant had solved the problem. 



