Exploration Fund Committee, 5 



" To open up a communication with the northern shores 

 of this Continent, is an enterprise which should engage the 

 sympathies and command the support of the merchant, the 

 squatter and the miner, no less than those of the man of 

 science ; for such an enterprise promises to abridge the 

 distance which separates us from the old world ; to bring 

 us, at an early date, in telegraphic communication with 

 India and Europe ; to open new avenues of commerce ; 

 to indicate how we may obtain access to vast areas of 

 pastoral land from which we are at present cut off, owing 

 to our ignorance of the intervening country; and to solve 

 a geographical problem, which is as important as it is 

 interesting. 



" Under these circumstances the Committee confidently 

 appeal to you for assistance in the way of soliciting contri- 

 butions in the district in which you reside, and woiild feel 

 obliged by your remitting any sums yon may receive on this 

 account to the Treasurer of the Exploration Fund, Dr. 

 Wilkie, of this city, or to the account of the Exploration 

 Fund at the Bank of Victoria, Melbourne. 

 "I am, Sir, 



" Your obedient servant, 

 "John Macadam, M.D., 

 " Honorary Secretary." 



For many months your committee zealoiisly labored, 

 but with very discouraging prospects of success — not 

 from any general unwillingness to support the object, 

 but chiefly from the commercial depression, which has 

 extended its influence through all classes of the com- 

 munity. From the many difficulties and discourage- 

 ments which your committee had to encounter, it 

 was almost on the point of abandoning the project as 

 hopeless, when eleven months of the stipulated period had 

 nearly elapsed the total amount of the subscriptions at 

 that time realised scarcely reaching one half of the stipu- 

 lated sum. 



The bright star of Australian progress was however in 

 the ascendant, and it was considered to be yet possible 

 to secure success by an urgent and final appeal to the squat- 

 ters, merchants, and country gentlemen in all parts of the 

 colony. 



This appeal, which was prepared in the form of a litho- 

 graphic letter, was immediately followed by the happiest 



