(ILLUSTRATION: Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society of London.
"Victoria D.G. Britanniarum Regina, 1837, Patrona.
Or, Terras Reclusas, Ernest Giles, 1880.")


INTRODUCTION.

Before narrating my own labours in opening out portions of the unknown
interior of Australia, it will be well that I should give a succinct
account of what others engaged in the same arduous enterprise around
the shores and on the face of the great Southern Continent, have
accomplished.

After the wondrous discoveries of Columbus had set the Old World into
a state of excitement, the finding of new lands appears to have become
the romance of that day, as the exploration by land of unknown regions
has been that of our time; and in less than fifty years after the
discovery of America navigators were searching every sea in hopes of
emulating the deeds of that great explorer; but nearly a hundred years
elapsed before it became known in Europe that a vast and misty land
existed in the south, whose northern and western shores had been met
in certain latitudes and longitudes, but whose general outline had not
been traced, nor was it even then visited with anything like a
systematic geographical object. The fact of the existence of such a
land at the European antipodes no doubt set many ardent and
adventurous spirits upon the search, but of their exploits and labours
we know nothing.

The Dutch were the most eager in their attempts, although Torres, a