AUSTRALIAN EXPLORATION.*
No books of travel are so dreary and dispiriting as the records, which succeed one another with melancholy monotony, of un- availing attempts to explore the hideous wastes which pre- sumably form the interior of the Australian continent. It is not premature or presumptuous to speak of the unseen country as hideous wastes, because so far as the brave but unfortunate explorers have advanced into it, the interior of Australia merits that description, and it is a reasonable supposition that the unexplored portions do not naturally differ from those which are known. There is no analogy between the unexpected and amazing revelation made by the exploration of the in- terior of Africa, and the possibilities concealed in the heart of Australia. The old-world notion of Africa was purely imaginary, and it was long persisted in, in spite of the hints of its erroneousness afforded by such attempts at ex- ploration as were made in the ages of faith in vast sandy deserts and the Mountains of the Moon. The imagination of men seems to have taken a directly opposite turn in the case of Australia. It pictured a vast realm of sterile, sandy desolation for the heart of Africa, in spite of the park-land and river scenery which each fresh traveller reported as he pressed onwards to the confines of that heart ; but as explorer after explorer returns to tell his tale of implacable waterless wastes, and plains covered with rank vegetation noxious to man and beast, of regions where there is no food for the hardiest animals, and no game to supply precarious sustenance for man, it persists in picturing a fertile and golden heart for Australia. The beautiful city, with its magnificent towers and temples, and its white race, strong, brave, and happy, towards which the dromedary of sacred lineage bore Kaloolah in Dr. Mayo's delightful African story, is not more mythical, as we believe, than any land of promise in the interior, yet unexplored, of Australia, and it is with far more regret than admiration that we read of fresh expeditions being urged or proposed. A huge, inaccessible mountain like that which rises from the centre of the island of Borneo, is not a more real obstacle than the awful central waste which it is only reasonable to believe lies between the coast districts of the southern continent, but imagination cannot conquer the one, whereas it looks with impatient longing across the other.
Only a little while ago we had the Journal of Colonel Egerton Warburton to comment upon,—a plain, sturdy, simple story, so little embellished by graces of style or literary art, that if such a narrative could have been common-place, it might have been called so ; and it recorded such sufferings, that we felt, if Colonel Warburton and his son had not happily been singularly devoid of imagination, and able to act practically on the axiom that "sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," they must have died or gone mad before the rescue came. In the same volume was comprised a brief account of the previous ex- ploring expeditions, and every name was a horrid reminder, in all cases of suffering, and in some of death. Those of Eyre, Burke, Wills (who that has read can ever forget the entries in Mr. Wills's Journal, up to the last, as day by day he was dying of starvation, alone, in the vast burning waste?) and Leichardt, are espe- cially associated with disheartening knowledge procured at a terrible price. Never were such wretched results hailed with so much obstinate enthusiasm as the successive failures of Austra- lian exploration ; never was cumulative evidence of the actual re- jected with such convenient credulity in the wildly improbable as by the squatters, who are naturally anxious, as Mr. Forrest says, " for fresh fields and pastures new," and to whom square miles represent less than acres to graziers and sheep-farmers in England. We understand their anxiety, but not their obstinacy of belief, in spite of repeated experiments ; and as for their not being " easily daunted," it is really rather irrational than plucky. They go on
• Explorations In Australia. By John Forrest, F.B.G.S. London : Sampson Low and 00,
supplying means, and men go on " turning up," to try similar forlorn experiments, and reach the same foregone conclusion. It is remarkable that each explorer who gives us a narrative of his doings and sufferings under his own hand is candid in his admis- sion of the failure of Australian exploration regarded as a whole, and frankly records the individual failures which have gone to make up the general sum of disaster, but each reserves for his own achievement just a little bit of success. It is difficult to convince impartial observers on this side of the world that any good has come of all this terrible amount of labour and suffering, but we listen patiently and with some admiration to one after another, as be tells us how he really did attain to some dreadful place in No-Man's Land, where men and beasts cannot live at all, where nature, who declines to be hurried by squatters with an unbounded stomach for "runs," has not yet prepared their habitat, after struggling, at an appalling cost in suffering to both man and beast, through regions only a little less dreadful ; and has returned to tell the tale, amid the plaudits of his fellow-countrymen. One passage in Mr. Forrest's book—it precedes his account of his own second expedition—is a handy summary of his subject, though he does not intend it for anything of the kind :-
"In 1860, Major Warburton—who afterwards, in 18734, succeeded in crossing the northern part of the great inland desert, after enduring great privations--contrived to reach 85 miles beyond the head of the Bight, and made several journeys from the coast in a north and north- westerly direction for a distance of about sixty miles. Traces of Eyre's expedition were there visible. The holes he had dug in search of water twenty years before wore still there, and the records of his journey were of groat value as guiding his successor's movements. His (Warburton's) experience of the nature of the country amply confirmed that of the previous explorer. He found the district of the north to be a dreary waste, destitute of food and water. Rain seldom fell, and when it did, was immediately absorbed by the arid soil. Bustards and moles were the only living creatures. To the north-west there was a little grass, but the tract showing verdure was very small in extent, and beyond it was again the scorched, barren, inhospitable desert. Two years after- wards, other explorations were attempted, and especially should be noted Delossier's. He was disposed to think favourably of the nature of the
country A few settlements were made, but the scanty pasturage, and the difficulty of obtaining water by sinking wells, in some instances to the depth of over 200 feet, have been great drawbacks."
In another passage we learn why the aid which the explorers of the northern districts derived from a coasting-ship to serve as a base of operations cannot be extended to the explorers of the southern regions of this realm of Giant Despair. For hundreds of miles along the shore of the Bight, no vessels could reach the shore or lie safely at anchor. Long ranges of perpendicular cliffs, from 300 feet to 400 feet high, present a barrier effectually for- bidding approach by sea ; and when, in 1867, a harbour was discovered, 260 miles to the west of Fowler's Bay, and named Port Eucla, its position on the west of the boundary of the colony entitled Western, not South Australia, to the benefit of the discovery. Western Australia seems, therefore, to be the best adapted of any of the colonies for the purposes of explora- tion, if indeed it is to be persisted in ; but on the other hand, it is the worst off in point of funds, and Mr. Forrest's second expedition, which started from Perth in March, 1870, was not to be compared, as to its equipment, with Colonel 1arburton's caravan of camels (they were all eaten, it will be remembered, before the rescue came) ; and to reverse the order of Eyre's journey might well have been to repeat its history. Of this, and of his third expedition, Mr. Forrest says, "These journeys were successfully accomplished." They were just that,—the brave men who undertook them went through with them, and suffered in the process much more than is told by Mr. Forrest ; we have to read between the lines of his brisk, matter-of-fact narrative the story of misery and danger, of which he makes so little that it might almost be overlooked. Mr. Forrest and his brother, who accompanied him on his third expedi- tion make their way from Champion Bay, Western Australia, to the Peake station, in South Australia, on the telegraph line which "divides Australia into two portions, nearly equal in dimensions, but very different in character. To the east are the busy and rapidly- advancing settlements, fertile plains, extensive ranges of grassy downs, broad rivers, abundant vegetation ; to the west, a ' great lone land,'—a wilderness, interspersed with salt marshes and lakes, barren hills, and spinifex deserts." That third expedition ought, on the explorer's own showing, to settle the question. The best word Mr. Forrest has to say for the best country he passed through is:—" We found some stretches of grassy country, but I am sorry to say almost entirely destitute of permanent water." The moderate and uncomplaining tone of the writer makes his judgment upon the country all the more impressive. We re- commend his readers to apply their imagination to his quiet chronicle of effort and anxiety, remembering all the time that he had not camels, as Colonel Warburton had, but only horses, and that " a horse in poor condition and in warm weather can- not go much over a day without water," and when he adds,—" It is a marvel to me how we got through at all; the season was an exceptionally dry-one, in fact a drought; our horses were of a very ordinary kind, and the country most wretched,"—we think they will share his wonder. Is Mr. Forrest correct in stating
that " a camel can go ten days without water We have never seen that term of endurance named before, and we Mt - not find anything in Colonel Warburton's journal, which deals minutely with the condition of his camels, to imply it. Mr. Forrest goes even beyond this statement; he says "the camel has been known in Australia to go twelve and fourteen days without water, carrying 300 lbs., and sometimes 400 lbs. weight." He is not likely to make a mistake on a point of so much importance to explorers, but the statement surprises us.
Mr. Forrest's first expedition, in search of the remains of the German explorer, Leichardt, and his party, who disappeared twenty-seven years ago, was a failure. It was indeed a wild-goose chase, undertaken on the information of a "black fellow," Jemmy Mungaro, who, from an amiable desire to please, told a circum- stantial story about his having seen remains of white men at a spot which corresponded with the last locality from which Leichardt had been beard of. Jemmy turned out to be a gay deceiver, and the remains turned out to be the bones of nine horses which had belonged to a long anterior exploring party. This expedition had no hardship in it, to signify, and it is pleasant to observe that it did not prejudice Mr. Forrest against the natives. He has much good to say of " black fellows," who are, according to him, cheery, kindly, trusty, and handy, when they are well treated, not irritated, and given enough to eat.
English readers will not care about the reports of the public receptions, dinners, and speeches, which occupy a large space in the volume, and in its literary interests, would have been better omitted. We should be glad to be assured that of the making of such books as this one and its many predecessors there shall be henceforth an end, caused by the general recognition that the problem of Australian exploration has now reached a point at which wise men give problems up.
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