Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/85

 last resource upon the animals that carried the general outfit.

THE OUTFIT OF AN AUSTRALIAN EXPLORATORY PARTY.

What is the most suitable outfit for an Australian exploratory expedition? is a question that is now likely to be of some interest, if such expeditions are to go on at the rate of the last three years; and that they will be kept up is not at all improbable. An emulative spirit has been aroused on the subject in the colonies. These later expeditions have shown an unexpected facility in accomplishing such great journeys, and nearly the western half of the island-continent remains unknown. There is still enough left of the "Terra Australia Incognita"—to use the old words of a century past—to supply stimulative occasion for at least two great expeditions; one to proceed from the head of the Great Australian Bight, in a direction a little west of north, to the point reached by Gregory from the opposite direction in 1856; the other from a point several degrees westward of the Bight in a northwest course towards Nickol Bay, whose rather promising vicinities were explored by Mr. F. T. Gregory two years ago (1861). As Victoria is possessed of an armed steamer, happily not in request for any purposes of war, and therefore available for other and happier uses, that colony can hardly do better, towards assuming