Page:The Australian explorers.djvu/247

 march back to the telegraph line, "a baffled and beaten man." During this inglorious retreat the course lay by the Peterman, the Palmer, and the Finke rivers, and by this route the original camp No. 1 was reached. Here is the conclusion of the whole matter in Mr. Giles's own words:—"My expedition was over. I had failed in my object (to penetrate to the sources of the Murchison River) certainly, but not through any fault of mine, as I think any impartial reader of my journal will admit.&hellip; We travelled to the eastward along the course of the River Finke (homeward), and passed a few miles to the south of Chambers's Pillar, which had been my starting-point. I had left it but twelve weeks and four days to the time I re-sighted it, and during that interval I had traversed and laid down about a thousand miles of country. My expedition thus early ends. Had I been fortunate enough to have fallen upon a good, or even fair, line of country, the distance I actually' travelled would have taken me across the continent."

II.

A second attempt was made by the same explorer shortly after his return from the first. The funds being provided by the liberality of the Victorian colonists, a light party, consisting of Messrs. Giles, Tietkens, Gibson, and Andrews, with twenty-four horses, were despatched for the purpose of crossing the western half of Australia. They left the tele-