examination of a new tract of unknown country for practical purposes, by
practical men--that, in fact, the discovery of new land of an available
kind for pasture has become a thing to be desired, of paramount
importance, and an object in the attainment of which the interests and
perhaps the fate of this colony depend.

You will thus conduct your expedition with the view of promoting this
principal object to the best of your ability. But it is hardly needful to
observe to you that this chief object may be promoted and attained
without neglecting to observe the geographical, geological, and
mineralogical features of the country you pass through; its
productions--animal and vegetable; and the character, dialects, and
customs, to some extent, of the aboriginal tribes you may fall in with.
You have been so frequently employed in exploring expeditions, though of
minor importance perhaps to the present, that you must be well aware it
is no less impolitic than cruel to come into actual collision, wantonly,
unadvisedly, and maliciously, with the natives; and, on the contrary,
that it is no less humane than politic to leave no angry recollections of
white people, where the footsteps of travellers, however few and far
between, must be expected to follow yours.

Should your route, either in proceeding on the expedition or returning,
be in the direction of that part of the Irwin River where for the
discovery of coal the colony is indebted to yourself and brothers, it
would be desirable that you should devote a short time to the examination
of the locality where it was first found; to excavation, to some moderate
extent, in the vicinity of the veins of coal of most promise; and, above
all, to the ascertainment of the fact if coal crops out, or if there be
in the soil any indications of it between the place where the mine was
discovered by you in 1846 and the seashore, in that intervening space of