EXPLOEINO IN QUEENSLAND.

Press, Volume XI, Issue 1379, 9 April 1867, Page 3

EXPLOEINO IN QUEENSLAND.

[From the " Australasian."]

There has been published in Queensland a narrative of a very extraordinaryexploratory journey made from Bockhampton to Cape York by Messrs Frank and Alexander Jardine, between August 1864 and January 1865. The journey was undertaken purely as a pastoral enterprise, the object in view being to drive a mob of cattle to form the nucleus of a station near the recently-formed settlement of Somerset. When it is remembered that the distance traversed equals that gone over by Burke and Wills, reckoning Menindie as their starting point, the magnitude of the enterprise will be understood. The narrative is edited by Mr Byerly, engineer of roads for the northern portion of Queensland, who explains that the long delay in publication chiefly arose from " indisposition on the part of the brothers to go into print, their modesty leading them to imagine they had done nothing worth

writing about, nor was it until the writer pressed them to allow him to compile and edit their journals that they consented to make them public." The object of the expedition was successfully accomplished, a sufficient number of cattle and horses getting to their journey's end to permit of a fair start being made with the station, in spite of adventures thus detailed by the editor : —" These hardy young bushmen met with, and successfully combated, almost every " accident by flood and field " that could well occur in an expedition. First, an arid waterless country forced them to follow down two streams at right angles with their course for upwards of 200 miles, causing a delay which betrayed them into the depths of the rainy season ; then the loss of half their food and equipment by a fire occasioned by the carelessness of some of the party ; next the scarcity of grass and water, causing a further delay by losses of half their horses, which were only recovered to be again lost altogether—killed by eating a deadly poison plant; and finally the setting in of the wet season, making the ground next to impassable, and bo swelling the rivers that when actually in sight, and within a week's journey of their destination, they were turned off their course, and were more than six weeks reaching it. Added to this, and running through the whole journey, was the incessant and determined, although unprovoked hostility of the natives, which, but for the unceasing vigilance and prompt and daring action of the brothers, might have eventually compassed the annihilation of the whole party."