with the same splendid spirit that prompted the explorers in those days "when the world was wide," he must needs carry out his project on his own initiative. No Ferdinand and Isabella will be found to equip him with men and money; no Queen Elizabeth, will furnish him with the sinews of war; no generous "government will offer to pay his expenses should he propose, singlehanded, to face the dangers of hunger, thirst, accident and probable death in an endeavour to cross those waterless wastes and dreary deserts that lie between the north and the south of Australia.
Why the idea should ever have occurred to me to risk a ride on a bicycle over eight thousand miles of territory, much of which was practically pathless, it would be hard to explain, excepting that the old roving spirit of my English forefathers may have reasserted itself after lying dormant for several generations, and awakening the desire to do and dare something outside the hum-drum limits of city life, urged me to blaze the trail.
For, although born in Melbourne twenty-five years ago, of parents whose ancestral home was in Cheshire County, England, the love of adventure had carried me twice round the world before I was seventeen and
