472 NORTHMOST AUSTRALIA 



together with my notes. In the beginning of 1913, some progress 

 had been made with this editorial task when Mr. James Dick, of 

 Cooktown, sent me proofs of a pamphlet which he was about 

 to issue, entitled : A Geological and Prospecting Expedition which 

 filled many Blank Spaces on the Map, Mr. R. L. Jack, Geologist, 

 and Mr. James Crosbie, Leader, Prospector. It was not till I 

 had gone over the proofs, correcting them only in so far as state- 

 ments of facts were concerned, that I fully realised how misleading 

 my original narrative must have been, misprinted as it was, and 

 unaccompanied by the necessary explanatory map. Mr. Dick was 

 a bushman and prospector of great experience, familiar with the 

 very ground described by myself, and a friendly, but unbiassed, 

 critic. In spite of all these qualifications, Mr. Dick had so seriously 

 misunderstood my narrative that it was obvious that a less qualified 

 reader would fall into even graver errors. 



Thereupon I commenced the preparation of a .map on which 

 my route was laid down from material derived from the original 

 field note-books and sketches, from the field maps used in the 

 two expeditions (kindly lent by the present Government Geologist, 

 Mr. B. Dunstan) and from the most recent issues of the Admiralty 

 Charts and the maps of the Department of Lands. The route, 

 it may be said, was charted in the field, day by day, on an outline 

 map or " blank," of the coast-line taken from the Admiralty Charts 

 as they stood in 1879. This involved the fitting of my supposed 

 route, as laid down on my blanks, to the topography of the modern 

 maps of the Lands Department. The same process was afterwards 

 applied to the routes of earlier and later explorers by sea and land. 



There follows hereon an annotated reprint of my official 

 reports on the two expeditions extending (i) from I5th August 

 to 3rd October, 1879, anc * (2) from 26th November, 1879, to 3 r( * 

 April, 1880. In this reprint I have made, without comment, 

 such minor corrections as would have been made had a proof passed 

 through my hands. Here and there a few words of explanation 

 have been interpolated : these are enclosed in brackets [ . . . ] and 

 initialled. Footnotes now added for the first time are also initialled. 



The " preliminary reports " are not given in the order in which 

 they were first officially issued, but are interpolated as summary 

 accounts of the portions of the journey to which they severally 

 refer. My own route and the routes followed by other explorers 

 were first charted on the " Queensland Four-Mile Map," and 

 afterwards reduced to an 8-mile scale. I cannot too strongly 

 insist that the 8-mile maps distinguished as A, B, C, D, E, F, 

 G, H, K, L, M, N, O and P, as well as the i6-mile maps Q and 

 R, form an essential part of the work. 



It was not till June, 1919, when Mr. John R. Bradford's report 

 on his exploration of 1893, preliminary to the selection of a route 

 for the telegraph line from Fairview, near Cooktown, to Cape 





