Edgar John Eyre, for instance, a Yorkshireman, landed in Sydney at the age of sixteen, and at twenty-five was a rich sheep-farmer, appointed by government protector of the black fellows. In 1840 the colonists of South Australia wanted a trail for drifting sheep into Western Australia, and young Eyre, from what he had learned among the savages, said the scheme was all bosh, in which he was perfectly right. He thought that the best line for exploring was northward, and set out to prove his words, but got tangled up in the salt bogs surrounding Torrens, and very nearly lost his whole party in an attempt to wade across. After that failure he felt that he had wasted the money subscribed in a wildcat project, so to make good set out again to find a route for sheep along the waterless south coast of the continent. He knew the route was impossible, but it is a poor sort of courage that has to feed on hope, and the men worth having are those who leave their hopes behind to march light while they do their duty. Eyre’s party consisted of himself and his ranch foreman Baxter, a favorite black boy Wylie, who was his servant, and two other natives who had been on the northward trip. They had nine horses, a pony, six sheep, and nine weeks’ rations on the pack animals. The first really dry stage was one hundred twenty-eight miles without a drop of water, and it was not the black fellows, but Eyre, the tenderfoot, who went ahead and found the well that saved them. The animals died off one by one, so that the stores had to be left behind, and there was no food but rotten horse-flesh which caused dysentery, no water save dew collected with a sponge from the bushes after the cold nights. The two black fellows deserted, but after three days came back penitent and starving, thankful to be reinstated. These black fellows did not believe the trip was possible, they wanted to go home, they thought the expedition well worth plundering, and so one morning while Eyre was rounding up the horses they shot Baxter, plundered the camp and bolted. Only Eyre and his boy Wylie were left, but if they lived the deserters might be punished. So the two black fellows, armed with Baxter’s gun, tried to hunt down Eyre and his boy with a view to murder. They came so near at night that Eyre once heard them shout to Wylie to desert. Eyre and the boy stole off, marching so rapidly that the murderers were left behind and perished. A week later, still following the coast of the Great Bight, Wylie discovered a French ship lying at anchor, and the English skipper fed the explorers for a fortnight until they were well enough to go on. Twenty-three more days of terrible suffering brought Eyre and his boy, looking like a brace of scarecrows, to a hilltop overlooking the town of Albany. They had reached Western Australia, the first travelers to cross from the eastern to the western colonies. In after years Eyre was governor of Jamaica. II