of West and Sooth Australia. This formidable tract, formerly called Nuyt's Land, better known at present under the name of the Great Australian Bight, has been supposed to be, and probably is, the most absolutely waterless portion of the surface of the earth.
It was once before traversed by the intrepid Eyre, who followed the windings of the coast, imagining that if rivers existed at all he should thus make sure of falling in with them; but never surely could greater aridity be conceived than that which it was his fate to encounter. His companions died beside him on the way, and he owed the preservation of his own life to the fidelity of a West Australian native, who had started with the party, and who carried him when too much exhausted to walk. By the time that the good native reached the abodes of civilization, with his master on his shoulders, the two men had performed a journey of nearly seven hundred miles, without having seen the smallest rivulet in the course of their march.
The present Governor of Western Australia conceived the happy expedient of sending out a party of explorers, who should be assisted by a vessel dispatched in the same direction and well supplied with food and water, with orders to meet the land travellers at certain points of the shore. In this manner the journey was undertaken and performed by a party headed by Mr. Forrest who, after suffering some privations, arrived safely at Adelaide, and the winter having been a favourable one, the Governor states in his speech, to which I have already referred, that the explorers "traversed a very large extent of the finest grass country, nearly destitute, however, of surface water."
