Page:Explorations in Australia (John Forrest, 1875).djvu/19

 CHAPTER I.

Previous Expeditions into the Interior. — Attempts to discover a Route between South and Western Australia. — Eyre's Disastrous Journey. — Leichardt, the Lost Explorer. — The Latest Explorations.

As the history, of the principal expeditions into the interior of Australia has been narrated by several able writers, I do not propose to repeat what has already been so well told. But, to make the narrative of my own journeys more intelligible, and to explain the motives for making them, it is necessary that I should briefly sketch the expeditions undertaken for the purpose of ascertaining the nature of the vast regions intervening between Western and the other Australian colonies, and determining the possibility of opening up direct overland communication.

With energetic, if at times uncertain, steps the adventurous colonists have advanced from the settlements on the eastern and southern coasts of