formed its most essential part. I resumed my task with renewed vigour, and with a wider scope, and Mr. Dick, up to the date of his death, assisted me in many ways through his local and personal knowledge, happily of more recent date than mine. I am grateful to his memory, and am conscious that he was, in a sense, "the only begetter of these ensuing lines."
Between 1880 and 1913, a great deal of charting of the interior had been accomplished by the Departments of Lands and Mines, although even now that work is incomplete. The new lines gave me, when I was recharting the lost map, an opportunity of correcting my sketching to correspond with actual surveys.
The first lesson to force itself upon me was that my estimates of distances covered had been influenced by fatigue or difficulties on the one hand (leading to over-estimation) or by good-going and good-feeding for the horses on the other (leading to under-estimation).
The second lesson was that, even in the direction of my course, I had in many instances strayed to the right or left, as a ship may steer a definite course and yet make leeway owing to the pressure of forces incorrectly estimated, or even not recognised. In short, the personal equation had to be introduced and allowed for before I could hope to reconcile my supposed with my actual position on any given date.
Long before I had finished the revision of my own narrative, it had become evident that its significance could not be fully understood without a critical study of the diaries of explorers who had gone before me and whose paths I had crossed from time to time. This led me back from Mulligan to Leichhardt, and as one by one the writings of honoured pioneers came under my review, I subjected them to the tests already applied to my own, and to the best of my ability substituted where the writers were for where they thought they were, and made the necessary allowances and corrections. Then it seemed that the story might as well be continued to the present date by the addition of the developments which have taken place since 1880 through the instrumentality of surveyors, explorers and prospectors. Some of the actors are, happily, still alive, and these have rendered material assistance by the contribution of original matter. Among these are Webb, Bradford, Paterson and Embley. To the last-named gentleman, especially, I am indebted for assistance rendered doubly valuable by his prolonged residence in the Peninsula, and which, in some parts of the work, almost amounted to collaboration.
While dealing with land explorers it was borne in upon me that they owed some of their difficulties and many of their errors to an imperfect comprehension of the work of earlier maritime explorers. They were not, indeed, to be blamed for this, as in few instances could they have perused the narratives or seen the
