LEICHHARDTS OVERLAND EXPEDITION 201 



which he refused to fulfil. He carried secret stores of dainties on 

 which he luxuriated while his followers were on the brink of starva- 

 tion. In the middle of the nineteenth century he was a living 

 proof that the Prussian spirit, as the world came to know it in 

 1914-18, was no new thing. 



It is painful to write such words of a man who did unques- 

 tionable service to Australia, and I am conscious that my opinions 

 may be supposed to be tinged with the bitterness engendered by 

 the Great War. As a matter of fact, these opinions were formed 

 on the whole mass of documentary evidence before the war broke 

 out, and I am unable to place the easy-going rule of saying nothing 

 but pleasant things of the dead above the duty devolving on the 

 historian to write the unvarnished truth. It may be added that 

 my conclusions had been arrived at before my reading on the sub- 

 ject had taken me as far as Ernest Favenc's History of Australian 

 Exploration? After reading that writer's illuminating remarks, 

 it will be understood that I make no claim to originality for my 

 estimate of Leichhardt's personal character. 



i Sydney. Turner & Henderson, 1888. 



