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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



nature and extent of the heritage now 

 firmly in English hands is a dishearten- 

 ing but fascinating story. Whatever 

 route was chosen the results were the 

 same : tales of hardship and disaster and 

 reports of no good land. 



TALES OF UNSURPASSED COURAGE 



One of the most dramatic incidents 

 was the discovery of the Darling River 

 by a group of worn-out, disheartened 

 men traversing a scorched, waterless 

 plain. A great river was found, but its 

 waters were salt ! The experience of 

 Stmt's men carried involuntarily through 

 the gorge of the Murrumbidgee into the 

 broad channel of the Murray; their jour- 

 ney to the sea down an unknown river 

 which followed an undreamed course, 

 and their arduous return up 800 miles of 

 current, with the scantiest of fare and 

 amid hostile blackfellows, constitutes a 

 record of endurance and resource com- 

 parable with Powell's descent of the Colo- 

 rado canyons. 



Parties from Sydney found little of 

 value beyond the Darling ; Bourke and 

 Wills from Melbourne perished of star- 

 vation on Cooper Creek. Leichhardt dis- 

 appeared utterly. From Port Lincoln 

 and Adelaide, Eyre traversed the coast of 

 South Australia, finding only three water- 

 holes in 300 miles, and penetrated to the 

 center of that State only to discover its 

 watercourses dry and its lake beds coated 

 with brine. Stnart, in 1862, succeeded in 

 making a complete traverse of the conti- 

 nent from south to north, but found little 

 on which to base the nation's future. 



From the tropical portions of the Com- 

 monwealth came the same tale. The set- 

 tlement established on Melville Island in 

 1824 was abandoned in 1829, in spite of 

 the rich soil, good surplus of fresh water, 

 and abundance of tropical fruit. Fort 

 Wellington, on Raffles Bay, retained its 

 colonists for only three years. Kennedy, 

 on York peninsula, was killed by the na- 

 tives ; his companions starved to death. 



As a record of human endeavor the ex- 

 plorations of Australia during these years 

 constitute a chapter in history for which 

 the United States has no parallel. The 

 pioneers who crossed the Alleghanies 

 found fertile country beyond ; the trap- 



pers and traders on our northern bound- 

 aries were in country abundantly sup- 

 plied with food and water ; the men who 

 pushed their way across the great plains 

 had forage and water for their animals 

 and wild game for themselves. The 

 forty-niners who crossed the deserts of 

 Utah and Nevada were encouraged by 

 knowledge of California beyond. Only 

 the Spanish explorers from Mexico and 

 pioneer travelers through the deserts of 

 Arizona and southern California can ap- 

 preciate the suffering and understand the 

 failures of the heroic Australian scouts. 



To the colonists grouped about the five 

 cities on the mainland the results of these 

 explorations between 1840 and i860 must 

 have been disheartening. The center of 

 the great continent, which their hopes had 

 pictured as grass-covered plains, fertile 

 valleys, lakes, and timbered highlands, in- 

 terspersed perhaps with arid stretches, 

 had turned out to be one of the most ex- 

 tensive deserts in the world, into which 

 streams rising near the coast were lost in 

 a sea of rock and sand. 



It is as if the people of the United 

 States should wake up some morning and 

 find that all the land between the Alle- 

 ghanies and the Sierra Nevadas had been 

 converted into plains like the arid 

 stretches of L T tah. 



However, persistent explorations grad- 

 ually disclosed to the Australians that 

 their continent, in spite of its arid ex- 

 panse, had well - watered agricultural 

 lands for many millions of peoples, and 

 that the resources in timber and ores and 

 grazing lands were unusually large. 



FORESTS OE AXCIEXT LINEAGE 



To me the most lasting impressions of 

 Australia are of its wonderful woods. 

 One readily understands why the Aus- 

 tralian loves his trees. The groves of 

 giant eucalyptus form pictures never for- 

 gotten, and the scent of the wattle brings 

 a homesick feeling like the smell of the 

 sage to a Westerner. 



The flora is not only beautiful, it is 

 unique, and has no counterpart in other 

 lands. Of the 10,000 species of plants 

 most of them are purely Australian, and 

 are unknown even in New Zealand. The 

 general impression one gets of Australian 



