2 ORIGIN OF THE EXPEDITION. 
better able to judge bow far that confidence was 
well placed, and bow far my exertions were com- 
mensurate with the magnitude of the responsibility 
I had undertaken. 
I have felt it the more necessary to allude to this 
subject now, because I was in some measure at the 
time instrumental in putting a stop to a contem- 
plated expedition to the westward, and of thus un- 
intentionally interfering with the employment of a 
personal friend of my own, than whom no one could 
have been more fitted to command an undertaking 
of the kind, from his amiable disposition, his exten- 
sive experience, and his general knowledge and 
acquirements. 
Upon returning, about the middle of May 1840, 
from a visit to King George’s Sound and Swan 
River, I found public attention in Adelaide con- 
siderably engrossed with the subject of an overland 
communication between Southern and Western 
Australia. Captain Grey, now the Governor of 
South Australia, had called at Adelaide on his way 
to England from King George’s Sound, and by 
furnishing a great deal of interesting information 
relative to Western Australia, and pointing out the 
facilities that existed on its eastern frontier, as far as 
it was then known, for the entrance of stock from 
the Eastward, had called the attention of the flock- 
masters of the Colony to the importance of opening 
a communication between the two places, with a 
view to the extension of their pastoral interests. 
The notes of Captain Grey, referring to this subject, 
