ment made him a grant in fee of five thousand acres of goodly land. Governor Weld, in 1874, in writing to Lord Carnarvon, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, in regard to the Eucla trip, said," Mr. Forrest's expedition has bridged the gap that separated West Australia from the other colonies; has led to settlement on the shores of the Great Bight, and to the connection of this colony with the rest of the world, by electric telegraph. I never doubted of the future of West Australia from the day when the news of Mr. Forrest's success reached Perth." In 1875 John Forrest visited England, where he was received with every demonstration of respect. In 1876 he was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, in presenting which the President, Sir Henry Rawlinson, remarked: " Never since John McDougall Stuart in 1860 traversed Australia from south to north, and explored the route on which the line of the electric telegraph was subsequently laid, has a journey been undertaken of the same magnitude and difficulty as that recently accomplished by Mr. Forrest, and never certainly either in Australia or any other country has a more conscientious and exhaustive survey been executed of the route traversed in so long and arduous a journey." In the absence of John Forrest, the medal was received by Mr. Lowther, Under Secretary for the Colonies, who, replying to the remarks of the President, said:— "His noble friend, Lord Carnarvon, would have had great pleasure in attending had he not been unavoidably detained, but even if his lordship had been present he would not have been the real 'lion'—that honour belonged to the absent traveller ..... Mr. Forrest had performed a feat which not only involved considerable physical and moral courage, but which, it might be sincerely hoped, would be of lasting service to the cause of mankind. His travels had not been pursued merely for pleasure, or the greed of gain, but they had been undertaken on public grounds, on the call of the public authorities, in the interests of the community. Lieutenant Cameron had been complimented on the accuracy with which through all the difficulties he had to encounter he had maintained his records; and in Mr. Forrest's case no small portion of the gratitude which he had so deservedly earned was owing to the very great accuracy with which, under circumstances of extreme difficulty and danger, he had continued to make his observations, thus adding a very important chapter to scientific geography." In addition to this in the same year he was created a Chevalier of the Order of the Crown of Italy by Victor Emanuel, and subsequently he was made an Honorary Fellow of the Italian Imperial Geographical Society. Later he had the distinction conferred upon him of Honorary Fellow of the Vienna and St. Petersburg Geographical Societies. In 1876 Mr. Forrest published a diary and a more enlarged account of his explorations. This volume is typical of a successful explorer, and simply and plainly tells the story of his great hardships, without egotism of any kind. He extended his experience as an author some years later by publishing "Notes on Western Australia, 1884-5-6-7."
The year 1876 was an eventful one for Mr. Forrest, for, in addition to those honours already mentioned, he received an important appointment and was married. He was appointed Deputy Surveyor General of Western Australia, a position he deserved and was well able to fill. Soon afterwards he was married. His wife, Margaret Elvire, is the eldest daughter of Mr. Edward Hamersley, of the well-known Hamersley family, Pyrton Manor, Oxfordshire, England. The Hamersleys are now among the largest landed proprietors in Western Australia.
Mr. Forrest and his wife took up their residence in Hay Street, Perth, where they continue to reside. The next few years were spent by Mr. Forrest performing important duties in the Survey office. In 1875 he conducted an exhaustive trigometrical survey of the Nickel Bay district; and from September of the same year to January, 1879, he acted as Commissioner of Crown Lands and Surveyor General, with a seat in the Executive Council of Western Australia. These offices he filled with the utmost satisfaction. Subsequently he was gazetted a Justice of the Peace. From May, 1880, to July, 1881, he held the position of Comptroller of Imperial Expenditure in the colony. Then, in 1882, he made a trigometrical survey of the Gascoyne and Lyons districts, and was dignified by being created by Her Majesty a Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George. In the following year he was promoted to the office of Commissioner of Crown Lands and Surveyor General of Western Australia, with a seat in the Executive and Legislative Councils. By these means he was enabled to render excellent service to the colony. He was gaining more and more knowledge of the potentialities of Western Australia, and visited nearly every portion of it, acquiring a wider experience and acquaintance with its resources than any other man. In March, 1883, and in April, 1885, he proceeded to the Kimberley district, North Western Australia, to specially report in the interests of the Government on its character and resources. Then, in 1886, he visited Cambridge Gulf in the extreme north, founded the town of Wyndham, and established a government settlement there. Thus he knows all the territory of this immense colony from Eucla to the Leeuwin and to Wyndham. After his return from Cambridge Gulf he was mainly instrumental in having land laws passed by the Legislative Council in 1886, which are based on the principle that no alienation of land from the Crown shall take place, except on conditions of improvement. This he believed would tend greatly to the development of the lands of the colony, and prevent the holding of land for mere speculative purposes. His career now began to partake more and more of a public nature from a political point of view. In 1886 he was a member of the local commission for the Colonial and Indian Exhibition, and was one of the delegates of Western Australia to the Colonial Conference, held in London in 1887. This Colonial Conference was one of the most important of its kind held up to that time, and many matters of Imperial concern and Colonial responsibility were considered.
It is not, after all, a very great transfiguration for a noted explorer to become a leader in politics. The qualities of generalship and tact and diplomacy are needed in both positions, but in politics the man who succeeds must be gifted, more or less, with strong oratorical powers. During the years that John Forrest was a member of the old Legislative Council, his public utterances bespoke careful research. When he spoke on any question, the listeners knew that he would say something worth hearing, and thus he became a man of importance among them. But the limited powers of the Legislative Council precluded the possibility of his attaining any notability. When the agitation for Responsible Government was begun, Mr. John Forrest early showed that he was an earnest believer in it, and more, that he would work zealously to bring it about. This is not the place to recount the many steps taken to secure the much desired privilege, sufficient to say that Mr. Forrest took a part in them. After much deliberation and continuous agitation, Western Australia was granted a Constitution in 1890, and was
