Wylie was to remain at the Sound with his friends, and to receive from the Government a weekly allowance of provisions, [Note 29:  This was confirmed by Governor Hutt.] by order of Mr. Phillips; who promised to recommend that it should be permanently continued, as a reward for the fidelity and good conduct he had displayed whilst accompanying me in the desert.

On the 13th July I wished my friends good bye, and in the afternoon went on board the Truelove to sail for Adelaide; whilst working out of harbour we were accompanied as long as any of the shore boats remained, by some of the natives of the place, who were most anxious to have gone with me to Adelaide.  Wylie had given them so flattering an account of South Australia and its pleasures, that he had excited the envy and curiosity of the whole tribe; dozens applied to me to take them, and I really think I could have filled the ship had I been disposed; one or two, more persevering than the rest, would not be denied, and stuck close to the vessel to the last, in the hope that I might relent and take them with me before the pilot boat left, but upon this occurring, to their great discomforture, they were compelled to return disappointed.

On the afternoon of the 26th of July I arrived in Adelaide, after an absence of one year and twenty-six days.

Chapter VI.

CONCLUDING REMARKS.

Having now brought to a close the narrative of my explorations in 1840-1, it may not be out of place to take a brief and cursory review of the whole, and to state generally what have been the results effected.  In making this summary, I have no important rivers to enumerate, no fertile regions to point out for the future spread of colonization and civilization, or no noble ranges to describe from which are washed the debris that might form a rich and fertile district beneath them; on the contrary, all has been arid and barren in the extreme.

Such, indeed, has been the sterile and desolate character of the wilderness I have traversed, and so great have been the difficulties thereby entailed upon me, that throughout by far the greater portion of it, I have never been able to delay a moment in my route, or to deviate in any way from the line I was pursuing, to reconnoitre or examine what may haply be beyond.  Even in the latter part of my travels, when within the colony of Western Australia, and when the occasionally meeting with tracts of a better soil, or with watercourses appearing to have an outlet to the ocean, rendered the country one of much greater interest, I was quite unable, from the circumstances under which I was placed, the reduced and worn-out state of my horses, and the solitary manner in which I was travelling, ever to deviate from my direct line of route, either to examine more satisfactorily the character of the country, or to determine whether the watercourses, some of which occasionally bore the character of rivers (though of only short course), had embouchures opening to the sea or not.