Government patronage, has not found the same careful preservation.

To find the material to write such a history would necessitate the work
of a lifetime, and the co-operation of hundreds of old colonists; and,
when written, it would inevitably, from the nature of the subject, prove
most monotonous reading, and fill, I am afraid to think, how many
volumes. The reader has but to consider the immense area of country now
under pastoral occupation, and to remember that each countless
subordinate river and tributary creek was the result of some extended
research of the pioneer squatter, to realise this.

Since the hope of finding an inland sea, or main central range, vanished
for ever, the explorer cannot hope to discover anything much more
exciting or interesting than country fitted for human habitation. The
attributes of the native tribes are very similar throughout. Since the
day when Captain Phillip and his little band settled down here and tried
to gain the friendship of the aboriginal, no startling difference has
been found in him throughout the continent. As he was when Dampier came
to our shores, so is he now in the yet untrodden parts of Australia, and
the explorer knows that from him he can only gain but a hazardous and
uncertain tale of what lies beyond.

But, in this utter want of knowledge of the country to be explored, where
even the physical laws do not assimilate with those of other continents,
lies the great charm of Australian exploration. It is the spectacle of
one man pitted against the whole force of nature--not the equal struggle
of two human antagonists, but the old fable of the subtle dwarf and the
self-confident giant.

When the battle commenced between Sturt and the interior, he was, as he