INTRODUCTION 
execution of his life work we ought not to overlook his 
artistic temperament and skill. He derived the keenest en¬ 
joyment from the contemplation of beautiful pictures, and 
would spend whole days in the great European galleries 
feasting his eyes on their masterpieces. Indeed, these 
galleries were among the magnets which drew him mos 
strongly from Australia to Europe. During the Great War 
he even risked his life by crossing the submarine-infested 
seas to visit London for the purpose of procuring pictures 
for the Art Gallery at Melbourne, in which he took a deep 
interest. He was himself no mean draughtsman, and used 
to illustrate his journals and family letters profusely with 
sketches which testify alike to the keenness of his observation 
and to the deftness of his hand. Many of these sketches are 
reproduced in the last work which he published, Wanderings 
in Wild Austy'alia , and they help the reader greatly to picture 
to his mind’s eye the scenes described by the explorer. 
But still more graphic than his sketches are the verbal 
descriptions which Spencer gives of the varied and often 
wonderful regions which he traversed in his immense 
journeys; for he wielded the pen no less adroitly than the 
pencil, and the landscapes which he depicts for us, while 
they never seek literary effect by elaborate word-painting, 
always bear the impress of perfect fidelity to nature. A con¬ 
spicuous instance of his descriptive power is his account of 
the marvellous change which comes over the Australian 
desert when a drought of many months is broken by heavy 
rain, and what had seemed a region of absolute sterility and 
death is suddenly transformed, as if by magic, into a vast 
garden gay with a profusion of flowering plants and teeming 
with an endless variety of animal life. The same power of 
bringing a landscape vividly before the reader’s mind comes 
out in his incidental descriptions alike of the dreary stony 
plains, desolate mountains, and rocky gorges of the far 
