The Explorer.

The new appointment was no windfall. It is not the way of a Government department, and it was least of all the way of the Colonial Office as it was then managed, to make new departures. The undertaking was initiated in Adelaide, which, with a vast unoccupied territory behind it, should have needed no new worlds to conquer. By some chance that very wide-awake young man, Lieutenant George Grey, thirsting for adventure and fame to be reaped from it, heard of the proposal, and induced a brother lieutenant, belonging to the well-known Lushington family, to make a joint offer of their services as explorers to the Colonial Office. The Royal Geographical Society gave weight to the proposal by earnestly commending it, and the Department decided to accept the offer. The chance of a lifetime had come, and the future Governor lay in embryo in that offer and its acceptance.

Grey was never a man to lie on his oars. Doubtless, he gave the authorities no rest till the expedition was under weigh. One omen was favourable. Sailing from Plymouth on July 5, 1837, the exploring party was carried to the Cape of Good Hope in one of the men-of-war, the Beagle, in which Darwin had made a remarkable voyage, when it was commanded by that Capt. FitzRoy, who was to be Grey's predecessor in governing New Zealand. It was a small party, as was the rule in those days, and only one of its members was acquainted with Australia. There was therefore a plentiful lack of experience, but there was no lack of enthusiasm or earnestness, of courage or energy, on the part of the leaders, or rather of the leader. For, whether from want of self-assertion on his part, or from the monopoly of the leadership claimed by Grey, Lieutenant Lushington early falls into the background. Grey was already, as he was to be through life, the king of his company.

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The ostensible object of the journey was geographical. It was to ascertain whether a large river fell into the sea in the neighbourhood of Dampier's Archipelago. The secondary, but far the more important, object was to discover a tract of country where an agricultural colony might be settled. Disembarking from the Beagle at the Cape of Good Hope, Grey there hired a schooner, the Lynher, that took him direct to the scene of his future explorations. On December 3, 1837, the party landed at Hanover Bay, in the far north-west, which he had fixed upon as a base of operations.

There he lingered for a month. Then he advanced in a due southerly direction till, on March the 2nd, there burst on his sight "a noble river," which he named the Glenelg, after the Secretary for the Colonies. Travelling up its right bank, he now struck eastwards; he next, following the course of the river, diverged to the south, where he was arrested, apparently close to the mouth of the Glenelg, by the want of provisions. Lieutenant Lushington, however, pushed on to a more southerly point, crossing many a stream by the way. He surpassed his leader, and was rewarded by being ignored.

Little more than three months later, after losing many of his ponies and some of his dogs, after an encounter with the natives that resulted in the spearing of the leader, after planting the seeds and letting loose the animals he had brought with him, Grey returned to his encampment in Hanover Bay. He had, indeed, discovered a large stream, but he had failed to discover any such great river as he believed must exist. He sailed in the Lynher for Mauritius, where he recruited, and then he returned to Western Australia in September, 1838, with the intention of resuming his quest.

Had he given the Secretary of State time to examine and acknowledge his despatch (a long time, it must be admitted, was required in those days), Grey would never have started on his second journey of exploration. Having read his narrative and fully considered his recommendations, Lord Glenelg had come to the conclusion that the tracts Grey had discovered were unsuited page 9for colonisation, and as he evidently believed that no other suitable districts would be found in that country, he desired that Grey should discontinue his exploration. It was his first condemnation and virtually his first recall.

But it was too late. Plainly assuming that he had received carte blanche to pursue his researches, so long at least as the object of them was not gained, he left Fremantle early in the following year on a second exploring journey before he received Lord Glenelg's despatch. He was landed at Bernier Island on February 25, 1839. Less than two months later they reached Perth. We need not recite the vicissitudes of the short journey. They were those of all explorers. Forgetting that he was on the stormy west coast, Grey committed the imprudence of burying his stores within reach of the sea. They were destroyed by a storm. This error of judgment ruined the expedition. There was nothing for it but to return by the most direct route. They rowed down the coast, but were cast ashore and virtually wrecked at Gantheaume Bay, 300 miles distant from Perth. The story of the journey thither is one of the most ghastly in the annals of travel. Grey lost command of his followers, who refused to adhere to his plan of long journeys and few rests, necessitated by the almost total loss of their provisions. The small party split into two. Grey went on with one division of six men. All suffered intensely from hunger and thirst. They toiled on with blistered and bleeding feet and enfeebled frames. On April 21 they reached Perth. Grey presented himself to the Governor, who did not recognise him. Acquaintances who had seen him only two months before passed him on the street. We are reminded of Wordsworth's portrait of Coleridge, when he returned to his home at the Lakes after one of his moonstruck, opium-eating absences.

'' Ah! piteous sight it was to see this man When he came back to us a withered flower,— Or like a sinful creature, pale and wan."^*

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Of the five individuals composing the second division of the party one had died, and the others were found, by a relieving party from Perth, in the last stage of exhaustion.

It was in many ways a memorable journey. All the strength and all the resourcefulness of the leader were called into play. Hardships and dangers of every kind were faced. Death in many forms was encountered. The historian of Australian discovery, William Howitt, indeed says that perhaps no journeys of exploration "have exceeded it in amount of disaster and personal suffering"—surely with some exaggeration. It was not to be compared with Sturt's exploration of the Murrumbidgee district, when the return voyage up the Murray occupied three months, and the leader, amid incredible exertions and privations, lost his eyesight, and one of the party lost his reason. Nor will it compare in this respect with the expedition of Burke and Wills across the Continent.

The geographical results of the two journeys were more contestable. Grey himself claimed to have discovered eleven rivers, which Captain Stokes afterwards reduced by one, affirming that Grey had mistaken a river seen at two different places for two rivers; but none of them was of great magnitude. He also claimed to have discovered two extensive mountain ranges, which he judiciously named, after the permanent Under-Secretary for the Colonies and the leading English geologist, the Stephen and the Lyell ranges. And, what was of far greater utility, he professed to have found three extensive tracts of good country. The Gascoyne district in Western Australia, as he named it after his friend Captain Gascoyne, was "most fertile." The rich alluvial soil of the north-western tracts in the neighbourhood of the Glenelg was "well adapted for either agricultural or pastoral purposes, but especially for the growth of cotton and sugar." Carried away by his imagination, he saw in a vision thriving settlements and great cities arise on it. The fact that Grey and his party nearly died of starvation in or near that fertile district is nothing page 11against the truth of his description. Sturt almost perished of starvation in what afterwards proved to be one of the most fertile districts of New South "Wales. To the last Grey maintained that it was well suited for colonisation, and it was chiefly to find such a tract that (he afterwards stated) he undertook the exploration of the country.

He had to undergo the humiliating experience of having his work reviewed by an expert within three years of its accomplishment. Doubting the truth of Grey's sanguine report on the district to the north of Perth, as Lord Glenelg had doubted the trustworthiness of his report on the Glenelg district in the far north, the authorities commissioned Captain Stokes of the Beagle to ascertain whether the country was really suited for the site of a projected settlement. Stokes's report was unsparing in its condemnation. The fertile tracts Grey described did not exist. Two of his rivers were only one. His maps were incorrectly drawn, and in general his report was grossly misleading. Stokes could hardly believe that anyone should be so reckless as to seek to induce emigrants to settle in a desert that was "absolutely a mass of bare ironstone." It was wholly unfit for settlement, being deficient in building wood, in water, and in grass.

An official vindication of the young explorer was soon made. Ten years after Grey, Assistant Surveyor-General Gregory traversed that very district, lying between Shark's Bay and Perth, and reported favourably of it. Till then public opinion, moulded doubtless by Stokes, had been adverse to Grey. Many years later, in 1891, the special correspondent of a London journal wrote of the valleys described by Grey as "the famous Greenough Flats, which the Agricultural Commission class among the richest agricultural land in all Australia." Still, we cannot help remembering that, after a lapse of seventy years, the cities "teeming with inhabitants and produce" have not arisen or suspecting that they will never arise. Almost fifty years after page 12Grey's exploration was made, the best that another naval officer, Commodore Coghlan, can say for the territory is that "Gascoyne is comparatively a flourishing place." It is a distributing and receiving centre for sheep stations, "some of which are as far back as 400 miles from the coast." Steamers, too, call frequently, but we observe that the men and stores they carry are en route for the Kimberley goldfields. Much of the land (says a new writer) has been found to be adapted for pasture and agriculture, and the better portions of it have lately been sold at fairly high rates.

A recent account, given in November, 1907, by one who is evidently well acquainted with the northern country traversed in part by Grey, is not unfavourable. The valleys of the rivers he discovered and named are now occupied by squatters. Millions of grass-covered acres are now grazed over by millions of cattle and sheep, which are yearly encroaching on the preserves of the wallaby and the kangaroo. From Gascoyne and other ports Singapore boats carry thousands of skins, while sheep and cattle in thousands are sent to Fremantle. Sun-tanned teamsters cart bales of wool a hundred—perhaps hundreds of— miles, and "the wiry brown-skinned Malays sweat freely as they transfer the wool to the waiting steamers." A mere handful of whites—squatters cramped in Victoria, overlanders from Queensland, and farmers from the banks of the Swan River—commandeering the services of the blacks and the browns, wrought the transformation. Between the tropic of Capricorn and the equator, the climate is too enervating for all but the most robust. The country will never be occupied by the crowded cities which the sanguine imagination of Grey foresaw in a vision.

The historian of exploration in Australia, Mr. Ernest Favenc, estimates that the geographical results of the two journeys were meagre, and the historian of colonisation will make a similar affirmation. In no sense were they epoch-making.