INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 23 



of Central Australia. At noon we suddenly came out at the edge of 

 a bluff overlooking the Cooper's Creek country. It took an hour to 

 descend from it to a wide basin of open country some 700ft. or 800ft. 

 below — a descent that was bad for horses and worse for camels. The 

 flats were literally paved with angular and rounded fraa;ments of loose 

 stone. We slowly picked our way over this kind of ground for several 

 hours, the horses becoming fagged and some very footsore, and the 

 camels tired. It had been a heavy day, with a hot sun and no water. 

 We camped Avithout any, and with very little feed. 



From a steep square-topped hill near the camp I had an extensive 

 view to the north-west. The ranges terminated a few miles beyond, 

 succeeded by open plains. Beyond them I could see sandhills extend- 

 ing to the horizon, ridge beyond ridge, scrub-covered, with here and 

 there a tree, until the outlines were lost in the haze of distance. Here 

 was the mysterious vastness of the desert interior, which held, some- 

 where, the secret which it was our mission to discover. 



For some reason, perhaps because of their contrast, this view and 

 another which I had seen nearly twelve months before in the Gippsland 

 Alps have impressed themselves indelibly on my memory. Then, as 

 I ascended a mountain summit on the Dargo River, a wonderful, far- 

 stretching view burst upon me. For many miles the snowy plains 

 stretched northwards to where, on the horizon, the chain of the Bogong 

 Mountains rose, lustrous in their white mantle of snow, resplendently 

 pure, under the cloudless deep blue of the winter sky in the Australian 

 Alps. This came before me mentally as I stood on that hill and beheld 

 its contrast on our first approach to Cooper's Creek. 



We made an early start next morning, for the horses were close 

 at hand, not having gone far among the rough rocks and stones, and 

 they looked very much cut up with their hard work and no water. 



The plains to which the small valley we had camped in led us 

 were so stony that we had to travel slowly for some hours, traversing 

 the most stony wilderness imaginable. When we reached the sandhills 

 the travelling became good, and we had our first interview with the 

 native inhabitants. We came across a number at a dry watercourse 

 who all ran away excepting an old man and woman and one or two 

 others, who waited till we came up. They were in a very excited state, 

 waving boughs and shouting. My blackboys could not understand 

 them, and it was only by pantomime that I got the old man to under- 

 stand that we wanted water and could persuade him to guide us. As 

 I walked beside him my horse suddenly neighed in his ear, whereupon 

 he climbed up a tree and remained there, at the top, enshrouded in 



