The latter will not be recorded in these volumes, not because there were no incidents of interest, but because they were conducted, in connection with other persons, for entirely pastoral objects.

Experiences of hunger, thirst, and attacks by hostile natives during those undertakings relieved them of any monotony they might otherwise display.

It is, however, to my public expeditions that I shall now confine my narrative.
The wild charm and exciting desire that induce an individual to undertake the arduous tasks that lie before an explorer, and the pleasure and delight of visiting new and totally unknown places, are only whetted by his first attempt, especially when he is constrained to admit that his first attempt had not resulted in his carrying out its objects.
My first and second expeditions were conducted entirely with horses; in all my after journeys I had the services of camels, those wonderful ships of the desert, without whose aid the travels and adventures which are subsequently recorded could not possibly have been achieved, nor should I now be alive, as Byron says, to write so poor a tale, this lowly lay of mine.

In my first and second expeditions, the object I had in view was to push across the continent, from different starting points, upon the South Australian Transcontinental Telegraph Line, to the settled districts of Western Australia.

My first expedition was fitted out entirely by Baron von Mueller, my brother-in-law, Mr.G.D.Gill, and myself.