Lord Brassey consented to receive these men on
board on trial. Better men it would not have been possible to obtain
had they been recruited through the usual agencies.

PART III.

_SPEECHES IN AUSTRALIA, TO WHICH SPECIAL REFERENCE IS MADE IN THE LAST
JOURNAL OF LADY BRASSEY. REPRINTED FROM THE AUSTRALIAN PRESS._

ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY OF AUSTRALASIA.

ADELAIDE, MAY 27TH, 1887.

The annual meeting of the South Australian Branch of the Royal
Geographical Society of Australasia was held at the Society's rooms,
Waymouth Street, on Friday afternoon, May 27th. Sir Samuel Davenport
(Vice-President) occupied the chair.

The ordinary business of the meeting having been concluded, and
speeches of welcome having been delivered by the Chairman, Lord
Brassey said: 'You have spoken of the voyages that have been taken on
the "Sunbeam" as adventures not unworthy of those old Northmen in
whose distant fame England and Australia equally share. I cannot take
to myself the credit of being an adventurer in the same sense in which
our northern forefathers were adventurers. I will not speak of the
morality of their proceedings, but simply of the feats of navigation
in which they engaged. Those northern forefathers of ours were not
provided with all the information which geographers and explorers have
given to the navigators of modern days. Consider for a moment the
hazards and the difficulties encountered by Captain Cook. Going about
as I do with all the facilities afforded by the most recent
discoveries in science, and still finding the art of navigation not
made so very easy, I confess that when I look back to a great man like
Captain Cook, who entered these seas with no information, and with no
other resource but his general seamanship and knowledge of navigation,
my admiration of his achievements grows continually stronger. I
particularly rejoice that so excellent a society as this has been
established in Adelaide. I understand it is a society collateral with
others which exist in the other colonies of Australia. It seems to me
that you are doing a most valuable work. Exploration must precede
settlement. It is a necessary process, by which alone you can arrive
at the proper settlement and development of this country. A previous
speaker expressed deep satisfaction that the control of this fifth
continent had devolved on the Anglo-Saxon race. In coming to these
colonies I touched at two seaports, which, by the contrast t