Читать книгу Explorations in Australia - Baron John Forrest Forrest - Страница 13

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 the vast island into the interior. Expeditions, led by intrepid explorers, have forced their way against all but insurmountable difficulties into the hitherto unknown regions which lie to the north and west of the eastern colonies. Settlements have been established on the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria. Burke and a small party crossed Australia from south to north, enduring innumerable hardships, Burke, with two of his associates, perishing on the return journey. About the same time Stuart crossed farther to the west, reaching the very centre of Australia, and telegraphic wires now almost exactly follow his line of route, affording communication, by way of Port Darwin, between Adelaide and the great telegraphic systems of the world.