CH. II.] EXCURSION WITH MR. CUNNINGHAM. 175 



perhaps be at liberty to name them also. The covering a map 

 with names of rivers or hills, crossed or passed, merely in 

 traversing an unknown country, amounts to little more than 

 saying, that so many hills and rivers were seen there ; and 

 if nothing were ascertained further of the connections of the 

 former, or the courses of the latter, we derive from such 

 maps, little more information than we had before ; for that 

 hills and rivers are to be seen in any unknown part of a 

 country, is generally understood to be the case, before a 

 traveller commences his journey. A future explorer, deter- 

 mines, with much trouble the position of a river in the world's 



map. '* This is my river B ," says the man who 



crossed it first, or who, by merely stumbling perhaps upon 

 it, claims all the merit of its discovery, even when circum- 

 stances may have forced him to proceed in that direction, 

 rather than that he was looking for what he found, under 

 the guidance of any analogy, or series of observations. 



In the afternoon I rode back to the hill of " Boorr " (seven 

 miles) with the theodolite, and I obtained some useful angles 

 to various points of Harvey's range, and on such few emi- 

 nences as could be distinguished in other directions. 



April 16. — Mr. Larmer went forward with the carts in a 

 north-west direction, while I proceeded westward, accom- 

 panied by Mr. Cunningham, towards a hill, which I had 

 intersected from Mounts Juson and Laidley, and which I 

 expected to find at about nine miles west by compass, from 

 our camp. We continued along an undulating ridge for 

 about five miles, crossing also a flat on which all the trees, 

 for a considerable extent, had been laid prostrate by some 

 violent hurricane, making a very uncommon opening in the 

 forest through which we were accustomed to travel. The 

 trunks lay about due east, and all nearly parallel ; thus 

 recording a storm from the west, before which our tents 

 must have gone "like chaff before the wind," and where 

 shelter from the trees, not under them, might have been 

 sought for in vain. 



