just as Burke and Wills, and many other intrepid traveller, laid bare the heart of Australia.
But those deeds were done before science and civilisation had put their girdle round the earth As our poet Lawson puts it:
"When the North was hale in the march of Time,
And the South and the West were new,
And the gorgeous East was a pantomime,
As it seemed in our boyhood's view;
When Spain was first on the waves of change,
And proud in the ranks of pride,
And all was wonderful, new and strange,
In the days when the world was wide."
We are inclined to think that, nowadays, there are no new worlds to conquer and that the restless spirit of the twentieth century must e'en grin and bear it; but in the short story I, Francis Birtles, have to tell in the following pages, it will be seen that the days of discovery are not yet at an end and that a fair field lies right within the confines of our own Australian Continent. We know but the fringe of our vast island home, while the immense treats that compose the hinterland, the millions of square miles in the Northern Territory, and the regions remote from civilised centres are comparatively unknown.
But the days of organised expeditions seem to have vanished, and, if one should happen to be inspired
