No auriferous country was found, but some fine specimens of the baobab tree were seen, some of them averaging fifty feet in diameter.
[Illustration.

Typical Australian Explorers of the early Twentieth Century.] We have now turned the last page of the story of those bold spirits who played no mean part in the making of Australasia by exploring the continent.

For nearly a century and a quarter the white man had been restlessly searching out and traversing every square mile of the land, and now, at the beginning of the twentieth century, his work is finished.
And throughout the long struggle it had ever been a stubborn conflict between the explorer and the inert forces of Nature.

Through the weary toilsome years of arduous discovery, Man and Nature had seldom marched side by side as friends and allies.

When Nature posed as the explorer's friend and guide, it was often only to lure him on with a smiling face to his doom.