Tuesday, 21 August 1860.
Page 5.

The “ship of the desert" has weighed anchor. The spectators in the Royal Park yesterday witnessed the departure of our first camel caravan - which, if its devoirs are worthily performed, will render our hitherto impenetrable interior just as facile for the merchant's or traveller's objects as the similar regions of drought and desolation on older continents.

This is an era when the new world and the old interchange gifts and characteristics; and if the expedition be successful, a cavalcade of dromedaries laden with the bales of commerce may in due course, possibly enough, be as periodical a spectacle in the capital of Victoria as in the more sun-scorched and historical highways of Bagdad or Timbuctoo. The wilderness which has so long baffled our explorers will be then no more insuperable a hindrance to enterprise and communication than the Sahara is elsewhere, though equally formidable in natural obstacles. And the camel, which is as special an instrument for man's convenience in certain countries as the reindeer in others, will by-and-by be brought to perform the same services for us which he has rendered from time immemorial on the beaten roads of Upper India, in the stony valleys of the land which once was Edom, or on those smooth African and Arab sands which were sometimes, but erroneously, supposed to be the exclusive scene of his labors. The go-a-head Yankee, ever open to conviction in the progress line, has appropriated him within the last two or three years to assist wayfaring over the great desert which intervenes between the Mississippi and the Californian regions. And the presence of this animal in America has dispelled another of the various erroneous notions respecting his capabilities. His genius being so essentially anti-amphibious, there was considerable doubt in the minds of his importers as to the possibility of getting this quadruped to face the deep and rapid rivers which are a more frequent feature of an American than an Australian or oriental landscape. But however reluctant at first to commit himself to an element he had so slight and occasional an acquaintance with, the camel traversing the Colorado desert has been already trained, we are informed, to swim the streams he encounters as readily as the horse. It is because so valuable a locomotive is of such peculiar importance on a continent with the geographical characteristics of ours, and because such promising material results are to be expected from the opening of a direct highway to our northern shores, that we have been anxiously solicitous that our first attempt at utilising the dromedary should lack none of the ingredients which insure success. The hard-footed camel, whose hoof is properly supposed to be best adapted to the surface of our deserts, has been procured. The savan has a present potent interest in the triumph of the Expedition, and the merchant a no less potent prospective one. Eager attention is fixed on this undertaking in Europe as well as here. And we therefore urged the necessity of equal discernment and caution in the arranging of its management as in the providing of its material. We have the experience of other countries to warrant confidence in the locomotive appliances of the enterprise; and it was reasonable that we should look for well-tried leaders also. And all the more reasonably because the history of Australian exploration has its instances of individual inefficiency, as it has the more numerous instances of extraordinary individual ability coping with and overcoming the miserable means for accomplishing his task which these colonies have heretofore placed at the explorer's disposal. We cannot, for example, regard either of the expeditions of Mr Gregory - who the local journals tell us has recently tendered for twenty-six squatting runs in Queensland - as other than failures in any public point of view. In his course from Sydney to Adelaide he traversed only some sixty or eighty miles of unknown country - the one exploit of the journey being the discovery of the connection of Cooper's Creek with Lake Torrens. And we must likewise regard the complete failures of Messrs Babbage and Warburton as in some sort due to the same want of those resources which a commander should possess in himself - and which fact is patent when we compare their efforts with the performances of Stuart, though still more inefficiently equipped. It would be harsh and unjust, indeed, to attach blame to those gentlemen for not wresting discoveries from the desert with appliances for the purpose so entirely inadequate and unsuitable. But, from the school of discoverers thus sternly created, we held, and hold still, that it would have been the proper course to have searched out one who had distinguished himself - who had won his spurs on that arduous field, and whose dearly-won experience would make success in the present undertaking a matter not merely of hope but of certainty. The choice, however, has been now made, and the expedition has set out. His friends speak sanguinely of the natural qualifications of Mr Burke for his duty, and we sincerely trust that those anticipations will be realised. Nowhere will the successful termination of the noble enterprise he has on hand be hailed with truer satisfaction - nowhere will he be more cordially honored for its successful guidance - than in the columns of this journal, which for years has lent its aid in clearing away the prejudices which retarded the introduction of the camel, and which has always treated the opening up of a highway to the north coast as the interest and the incumbent duty of Victoria, as the foremost Australian community.