THE OVERLANDERS 171 



from us with expressions of friendship. No true naturalist 

 can fail to be interested in the ways and habits of the 

 natives of a wild country ; and, as it is always best to 

 concentrate and keep together as much as possible in- 

 formation on one particular subject, I have devoted a 

 chapter (XX.) to a description of the Australian black- 

 fellow, in which I hope the ethnologist will find something 

 that is new ; or at least a few corrections of hasty and ill- 

 informed descriptions of him. For all that I have read 

 about the Australian aborigine is not to be relied on ; and 

 without presuming to contradict the accounts of those 

 whose work and sufferings in the trying interior of our 

 great continent entitle them to a reverential hearing, I 

 have striven to give a truthful picture of a doomed race as 

 it has appeared to my eyes. 



Such a journey as that which I am now describing 

 would, fifty or sixty years ago, have attracted some 

 attention ; but in 1890 a ramble of a few hundred miles in 

 the back-runs, the bush, or the desert interior, was an 

 everyday occurrence in all parts of the country. With the 

 experience of the early explorers and hundreds of others 

 who had afterwards followed in their tracks to guide me, 

 the journey was robbed of nine-tenths of its danger and 

 all its importance, and at Perth I was scarcely asked what 

 I was doing or where I was going ; and though at the 

 outlying stations some interest was evinced in my move- 

 ments, it was not thought that I should, or could, reach 

 any tract that had not been repeatedly passed through 

 and become more or less well known, in general features 

 at least. Travelling in Australia has lost all its romance 

 and most of its danger. Scarcely had such men as Sturt 

 and Eyre completed their heroic work at the cost, too 

 often, of life, sight, or health, than scores of daring traders, 

 known as the Overlanders, not only performed similarly 

 arduous journeys, but took great herds of sheep and cattle 

 with them. Early in 1838 two expeditions respectively 

 under the direction of Messrs Eyre and Howden started 

 from Port Phillip to endeavour to reach Adelaide, South 

 Australia. The success of their expeditions, and the high 



