surveyors with him, who chained as he went every yard of the thousands of miles he explored.  He was knighted for his explorations, and lived to enjoy the honour; so indeed was Sturt, but in his case it was only a mockery, for he was totally blind and almost on his deathbed when the recognition of his numerous and valuable services was so tardily conferred upon him. (Dr. W.H.  Browne, who accompanied Sturt to Central Australia in 1843-5 as surgeon and naturalist, is living in London; and another earlier companion of the Father of Australian Exploration, George McCleay, still survives.)

These two great travellers were followed by, or worked simultaneously, although in a totally different part of the continent, namely the north-west coast, with Sir George Grey in 1837-1839.  His labours and escapes from death by spear-wounds, shipwreck, starvation, thirst, and fatigue, fill his volumes with incidents of the deepest interest.  Edward Eyre, subsequently known as Governor Eyre, made an attempt to reach, in 1840-1841, Central Australia by a route north from the city of Adelaide; and as Sturt imagined himself surrounded by a desert, so Eyre thought he was hemmed in by a circular or horse-shoe-shaped salt depression, which he called Lake Torrens; because, wherever he tried to push northwards, north-westwards, eastwards, or north-eastwards, he invariably came upon the shores of one of these objectionable and impassable features.  As we now know, there are several of them with spaces of traversable ground between, instead of the obstacle being one continuous circle by which he supposed he was surrounded.  In consequence of his inability to overcome this obstruction, Eyre gave up the attempt to penetrate into Central Australia, but pushing westerly, round the head of Flinders’ Spencer’s Gulf, where now the inland seaport town of Port Augusta stands, he forced his way along the coast line from Port Lincoln to Fowler’s Bay (Flinders), and thence along the perpendicular cliffs of the Great Australian Bight to Albany, at King George’s Sound.

This journey of Eyre’s was very remarkable in more ways than one; its most extraordinary incident being the statement that his horses travelled for seven days and nights without water.  I have travelled with horses in almost every part of Australia, but I know that after three days and three nights without water horses would certainly knock up, die, or become utterly useless, and it would be impossible to make them continue travelling.  Another remarkable incident of his march is strange enough.  One night whilst Eyre was watching the horses, there being no water at the encampment, Baxter, his only white companion, was murdered by two little black boys belonging to South Australia, who had been with Eyre for some time previously.  These little boys shot Baxter and robbed the camp of nearly all the food and ammunition it contained, and then, while Eyre was running up from the horses to where Baxter lay, decamped into the