CONCLUDING REMARKS.


Having now brought to a close the narrative of my explorations in 1840-1,
it may not be out of place to take a brief and cursory review of the
whole, and to state generally what have been the results effected. In
making this summary, I have no important rivers to enumerate, no fertile
regions to point out for the future spread of colonization and
civilization, or no noble ranges to describe from which are washed the
debris that might form a rich and fertile district beneath them; on the
contrary, all has been arid and barren in the extreme.

Such, indeed, has been the sterile and desolate character of the
wilderness I have traversed, and so great have been the difficulties
thereby entailed upon me, that throughout by far the greater portion of
it, I have never been able to delay a moment in my route, or to deviate
in any way from the line I was pursuing, to reconnoitre or examine what
may haply be beyond. Even in the latter part of my travels, when within
the colony of Western Australia, and when the occasionally meeting with
tracts of a better soil, or with watercourses appearing to have an outlet
to the ocean, rendered the country one of much greater interest, I was
quite unable, from the circumstances under which I was placed, the
reduced and worn-out state of my horses, and the solitary manner in which
I was travelling, ever to deviate from my direct line of route, either to
examine more satisfactorily the character of the country, or to determine
whether the watercourses, some of which occasionally bore the character
of rivers (though of only short course), had embouchures opening to the