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November was about the largest seen up to that date. At a banquet extended to the explorers Mr. Giles declared:—"If on our departure we leave among you a name worthy to be ranked among your own explorers, we shall be amply repaid for all the weariness and anxiety of our journey." He described the country traversed as an undulating bed of dense scrub, except between the 125° and 127° long., near lat. 30°, where the track was crossed by an arm of the great southern plain, which, though grassy, was quite waterless.

Not yet satiated, Giles returned to South Australia overland by another route. On 13th January, 1876, he departed from Perth, pushed north to the Ashburton, thence passed through the desert to Rawlinson Range. His course was north of that of Forrest, and considerably south of Warburton's. Water was obtained in native wells, and no serious difficulties were experienced. The camels proved invaluable agents in exploration. Mr. Young, the astronomer and naturalist to the party, furnished considerable information respecting the regions traversed. He reported that there is a large tract of country extending from the Great Australian Bight to Jeffry's Bay in the north-east entirely covered by tertiaries. This tract, he believed, was probably the bed of an ocean which at one period separated Western Australia from the rest of the continent. The land seen by the party was of little interest to the pastoralist, but the knowledge obtained was of the highest possible value from a scientific point of view. Thus the sullen central deserts had been penetrated in four different places and the old problems of inland seas and the nature of the interior were solved. The men who first accomplished this task must rank among the illustrious in history.





NCE again, for a time, Western Australia was in the throes of depression. With the recent expansion of export trade had come an unreasonable stagnation in vested interests. The decadence of agricultural enterprise, and the increased expenditure of British capital, were most seriously felt during the years 1879 to 1883. Local history was leaving its mark upon the energy of the people, whose languorous pulse now wasted a strong dynamic stimulant to rouse them from their torpor.

The disastrous inactivity even crept into Parliament. Some members of the Council evinced a hurtful lack of enterprise. The rigour with which they oppose all railway proposals was astonishing. When the line from Fremantle to Guildford and thence to the eastern districts was advocated they rose in their places and oracularly proclaimed that such a tremendous undertaking would spell ruin, and leave an incubus on the finances that would render the colony bankrupt. They opposed the progressive party with the ardour of a bigot. They ridiculed advanced ideas with superior disdain, and seemed to prefer perpetual stagnation than risk the construction of transit facilities which admitted a doubt as to whether they would cheapen production and enhance land values. It was only after unremitting agitation that these people were convinced that it was advisable to build a railway to the eastern agricultural centres.

Representative government, although not all that could be desired, had at least been responsible for many advantageous innovations. The various lines of telegraph, the railway from Geraldton to Northampton, the decision to build a second line into the country from Fremantle, and the improved harbour facilities, were obtained through the eager advocacy of elective councillors. Had the nominee Council continued in existence, there is no telling how long colonists would have had to wait for these works. The progressive party advocated railway construction as a way out of their troubles, and they had, at first, to fight restlessly before certain 