which their sinister forebodings told them was all but inevitable with a small but adventurous band.  You nevertheless plunged into the unknown regions that lay before you.  After the lapse of a few months without any tidings of your progress or fate, the notion became generally entertained that your party had fallen victims to some one of the many dangers it had been your lot to encounter; that you had perished by the hands of the hostile natives of the interior; that want of water or exposure to tropical climate were even but a few of the many evils to which you had rendered yourself liable, and to the influence of some one or more of which it was but too probable you had fallen a prey.  Two parties successively went out with the hope of overtaking you, or at least of ascertaining some particulars of your fate.  The result of these efforts was, however, fruitless, and but few were so sanguine as to believe in the possibility of you or your comrades being still in existence.  I need not recall to the recollection of those here present, the surprise, the enthusiasm, and the delight, with which your sudden appearance in Sydney was hailed, about six months ago.  The surprise was about equal to what might be felt at seeing one who had risen from the tomb; a surprise, however, that was equalled by the warm and cordial welcome with which you were embraced by every colonist; and when we listened to the narrative of your long and dreary journey—­the hardships you had endured, the dangers you had braved, the difficulties you had surmounted—­the feeling with which your return amongst us was greeted, became one of universal enthusiasm.  For it would indeed be difficult to point out, in the career of any traveller, the accomplishment of an equally arduous undertaking, or one pregnant with more important results, whether we contemplate them in a scientific, an economical, or a political point of view.  The traversing, for the first time by civilised man, of so large a portion of the surface of this island, could not fail to be attended with many discoveries deeply interesting to the scientific inquirer, in botany, geology, and zoology.  Your contributions to each of these departments of knowledge have consequently been equally novel and valuable.  In a social and economical point of view, it is difficult, if not impossible, to over-estimate the importance of the discovery recently made of an all but boundless extent of fertile country, extending to the north, soon to be covered with countless flocks and herds, and calculated to become the abode of civilized man.  In its political aspect, the possession of an immense territory, now for the first time discovered to be replete with all those gifts of nature which are necessary for the establishment and growth of a civilized community, cannot be regarded as a fact of small importance; nor the possession of a continuous tract of fine and fertile land, that connects us with the shores of the Indian ocean, and which would appear to render the Australian continent