CHAPTER VI. 
CONCLUDING REMARKS. 
Having now brought to a close the narra- 
tive of my explorations in 1840-1, it may not be 
out of place to take a brief and cursory review of the 
whole, and to state generally what have been the 
results effected. In making this summary, I have 
no important rivers to enumerate, no fertile regions 
to point out for the future spread of colonization 
and civilization, or no noble ranges to describe from 
which are washed the debris that might form a rich 
and fertile district beneath them ; on the contrary, 
all has been arid and barren in the extreme. 
Such, indeed, has been the sterile and desolate 
character of the wilderness I have traversed, and so 
great have been the difficulties thereby entailed upon 
me, that throughout by far the greater portion of 
it, I have never been able to delay a moment in my 
route, or to deviate in any way from the line I was 
pursuing, to reconnoitre or examine what may haply 
be beyond. Even in the latter part of my travels, 
when within the colony of Western Australia, and 
when the occasionally meeting with tracts of a better 
soil, or with watercourses appearing to have an outlet 
to the ocean, rendered the country one of much 
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