Produced by Col Choat Notes in the book are shown in square brackets at the point referenced. Maps and plates not shown in the text version of this ebook ======================================================================= Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia In Search of a Route from Sydney to the Gulf of Carpentaria (1848) by Lt. Col. Sir Thomas Livingstone Mitchell Kt. D.C.L. (1792-1855) Surveyor-General of New South Wales TO THE HONOURABLE THE SPEAKER AND MEMBERS OF THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL OF NEW SOUTH WALES, THIS JOURNAL OF AN EXPEDITION OF DISCOVERY, PETITIONED FOR BY THE COUNCIL, AND UNDERTAKEN AT THE EXPENSE OF THE COLONY, IS DEDICATED BY THEIR MOST OBEDIENT, HUMBLE SERVANT, T. L. MITCHELL PREFACE. "Admiring Nature in her wildest grace,"[* Burns.] it has ever been the most attractive of the author's duties to explore the interior of Australia. There the philosopher may look for facts; the painter and the poet for original studies and ideas; the naturalist for additional knowledge; and the historian might begin at a beginning. The traveller there seeks in vain for the remains of cities, temples, or towers; but he is amply compensated by objects that tell not of decay but of healthful progress and hope;--of a wonderful past, and of a promising future. Curiosity alone may attract us into the mysterious recesses of regions still unknown; but a still deeper interest attaches to those regions, now that the rapid increase of the most industrious and, may we add most deserving people on earth, suggests that the land there has been reserved by the Almighty for their use. In Australia, the great family of civilized man seems still at that early period between history and fable, upon which, even in "the world as known to the ancients," the Roman poet had to look very far back:-- "Communemque prius, ceu lumina solis et auras, Cautus humum longo signavit limite mensor." [* Ovid, Met. lib. i.]