The party had been tantalised by threatening clouds, which never broke in rain. When on the third day they gathered once more, black and lowering. Baxter urged Eyre to camp that night instead of pushing on, as rain seemed certain, and the rock holes by which they were then passing were well adapted to catch the slightest shower. Eyre consented, against his better judgment. It was necessary to watch the horses lest they should ramble too far, and Eyre kept the first watch. The night was cold, the wind blowing a gale and driving the flying scud across the face of the moon. The horses wandered off in different directions in the scrub, giving the tired man much trouble to keep them together. About half-past ten he drove them near the camp intending shortly to call the overseer to relieve him.

Suddenly the dead stillness of the night and the wilderness was broken by the report of a gun. Eyre was not at first alarmed, thinking it was a signal of Baxter's to indicate the position of their camp. He called, but received no answer. Hastening in the direction of the shot, he was met by Wylie, the King George's Sound native, running towards him in great alarm crying out: "Oh, massa, massa, come here!" and then losing speech from terror. Eyre was soon at the camp, and one glance was enough to see that his purpose must now be pursued grimly alone. Baxter, fatally wounded, was stretched upon the ground, bleeding and choking in his last agony. As Eyre raised his faithful companion in his arms he expired.

"At the dead hour of night, in the wildest and most inhospitable waste of Australia, with the fierce wind raging in unison with the scene of violence before me, I was left with a single native, whose fidelity I could not rely on, and who, for aught I knew might be in league with the other two, who, perhaps were even now lurking about to take my life, as they had done that of the overseer."

On examining the camp, Eyre found that the two boys had carried off both double-barrelled guns, all the baked bread and other stores, and a keg of water. All they had left behind was a rifle, with the barrel choked by a ball jammed in it, four gallons of water, forty pounds of flour, and a little tea and sugar.

When he had time to think the matter over calmly, Eyre judged, from the position of the body, that Baxter must have been aroused by the two natives plundering the camp, and that, getting up hastily to stop them, he was immediately shot. His first care was to put his rifle into serviceable condition, and then, when morning broke, he hastened to leave the ill-omened place. It was impossible to bury the body of his murdered companion; one unbroken sheet of rock covered the surface of the country for miles in every direction. Well might Eyre write, many years afterwards:—

"Though years have now passed away since the enactment of this tragedy, the dreadful horrors of that time and scene are recalled before me with frightful vividness, and make me shudder even now when I think of them. A lifetime was crowded into those few short hours, and death alone may blot out the impressions they produced."

The two murderers followed the white man and boy during the first day, evading all Eyre's attempts to bring them to close quarters, and calling to the remaining boy, Wylie, who refused to go to them. They disappeared the next morning, and must have died miserably of thirst and starvation.

Seven days passed without a drop of water for the horses, before they reached the end of the line of cliffs, and providentially came to a native well amid the sand dunes. From this point water was more frequently obtained, and what wretched horses they had left showed feeble symptoms of renewed life. At last, when their rations were completely exhausted, they sighted a ship at anchor in Thistle Cove. She proved to be the Mississippi, commanded by Captain Rossitur, the whaler already referred to as the first foreign vessel to enter Port Lincoln; and once more Eyre had to give thanks for relief at a most critical moment.

For ten days, in the hospitable cabin of the French whaler, he forgot his sufferings, and regained some of his lost strength. Then, provided with fresh clothes and provisions, and with his horses freshly-shod, Eyre recommenced his weary pilgrimage, and, in July, 1841, arrived at his long-desired goal, King George's Sound.

In reflecting upon this painful march of Eyre's round the Great Bight, one feels an exceeding great pity that so much heroic suffering should have been spent on the execution of a purpose the fulfilment of which promised but little of economic value. The maritime surveys had fairly established the fact that no considerable creek or river found its way into the Southern Ocean, either in or about the Great Bight. Granted that the outflow of some of our large Australian rivers had been overlooked by the navigators, the local conditions were such as to render it virtually certain that any such omission was not made along this part of the south coast. Here there was to be found no fringe of low, mangrove-covered flats, studded with inlets and saltwater creeks, thus masking the entrance of a river. In some parts, a bold forefront of lofty precipitous cliffs, in others a clean-swept sandy shore, alone faced the ocean. Flinders, constantly on the alert as he was for anything resembling the formation of a river-mouth, would scarcely have been mistaken in his reading of such a coast-line. And the journey resulted in no knowledge of the interior, even a short distance back from the actual coast-line. The conjectures of a worn-out, starving man, picking his way painfully along the verge of the beach, were, in this respect, of little moment.

Eyre, however, won for himself well-deserved honour for courage and perseverance, in as exacting circumstances as ever beset a solitary explorer. The picture of the lonely man in his plundered camp bending over his murdered companion, separated from his fellow-men by countless miles of unwatered and untrodden waste, appeals resistlessly to our sympathies. But admiration of Eyre's good qualities has blinded many to his errors of judgment.

He was accorded a generous public welcome on his return to Adelaide, and was subsequently appointed Police Magistrate on the Murray, where his inland experience and knowledge of native character were of great service. When Sturt started on his memorable trip to the centre of Australia, Eyre accompanied his old friend some distance. But his activities were exercised in other fields than those of Australian exploration during his after life. He was Lieutenant-Governor of the Province of New Munster in New Zealand under Sir George Grey from 1848 to 1853, when that colony was divided into two provinces. He was afterwards Governor-General of Jamaica, where the active and energetic measures he took to crush the insurrection of 1865 incited a storm of opposition against him in certain quarters, and he played a leading part in the great constitutional cases of Philips v. Eyre, and The Queen v. Eyre. He died at Steeple Aston, in Oxfordshire, in 1906.



CHAPTER 12. ATTEMPTS TO REACH THE CENTRE.

[Map (Diagram). Supposed Extent and Formation of Lake Torrens in 1846.]

12.1. LAKE TORRENS PIONEERS AND HORROCKS.

It will be remembered that Eyre, in 1840, reached, after much labour, an elevation to the north-east, at the termination of the range which he had followed, and had named it Mount Hopeless. From the outlook from its summit he came to the conclusion that the lake was of the shape shown in the diagram, completely surrounding the northern portion of the new colony of South Australia. In fact, he formed a theory that the colony in far distant times had been an island, the low-lying flats to the east joining the plains west of the Darling. It was in 1843 that the Surveyor-General of South Australia, Captain Frome, undertook an expedition to determine the dimensions of this mysterious lake. He reached Mount Serle, and found the dry bed of a great lake to the eastward, as Eyre had described, but discovered that Eyre had made an error of thirty miles in longitude, placing it too far to the east. He got no further north. He thus confirmed the existence of a lake eastward of Lake Torrens (now Lake Frome), but achieved nothing to prove or disprove Eyre's theory of their continuity. Prior to this the pioneers had spread settlement both east and west of Eyre's track from Adelaide to the head of Spencer's Gulf. Amongst these early leaders of civilisation in the central state are to be found the names of Hawker, Hughes, Campbell, Robinson, and Heywood. But unfortunately the details of their expeditions in search of grazing country have not been preserved.



John Ainsworth Horrocks is one of those whose accidental death at the very outset of his career plunged his name into oblivion. Had he lived to climb to the summit of his ambition as an explorer, it would have been written large in Australian history. That he had some premonition of the conditions necessary to successful exploration to the west is shown by his having been the first to employ the camel as an aid to exploration. He took one with him on his last and fatal trip, and it is an example of fate's cruel irony that the presence of this animal was inadvertently the cause of his death.

Horrocks was born at Penwortham Hall, Lancashire, on March 22nd, 1818. He was very much taken with the South Australian scheme of colonisation, and left London for Adelaide, where he arrived in 1839. He at once took up land, and with his brother started sheep-farming. He was a born explorer, however, and made several excursions into the surrounding untraversed land, finding several geographical features, which still preserve the names he gave them. In 1846 he organised an expedition along more extended lines, intending to proceed far into the north-west and west. After having over-looked the ground, he would then prepare another party on a large scale to attempt the passage to the Swan River. He started in July, but in September occurred the disaster which cut him off in the flower of his promise. In his dying letter he describes how he saw a beautiful bird, which he was anxious to obtain:—

"My gun being loaded with slugs in one barrel and ball in the other, I stopped the camel to get at the shot belt, which I could not get without his lying down.

"Whilst Mr. Gill was unfastening it, I was screwing the ramrod into the wad over the slugs, standing close alongside of the camel. At this moment the camel gave a lurch to one side, and caught his pack in the cock of my gun, which discharged the barrel I was unloading, the contents of which first took off the middle fingers of my right hand between the second and third joints, and entered my left cheek by my lower jaw, knocking out a row of teeth from my upper jaw."

His sufferings were agonising, but he was easy between the fearful convulsions, and at the end of the third day after he had reached home, whither his companions had succeeded in conveying him, he died without a struggle.

12.2. CAPTAIN STURT.

Charles Sturt, whose name is so closely bound up with the exploration of the Australian interior, had settled in the new colony which the South Australians loyally maintain he had created by directing attention to the outlet of the Murray. After a short re-survey of the river, from the point where Hume crossed it to the junction of the Murray and Murrumbidgee, which had been one of Mitchell's tasks, he re-entered civil life under the South Australian Government. He was now married, and settled on a small estate which he was farming, not far from Adelaide. In 1839 he became Surveyor-General, but in October of the same year he exchanged this office for that of Commissioner of Lands, which he held until 1843. In the following year he commenced his most arduous and best-known journey, a journey that has made the names of Sturt's Stony Desert and the Depot Glen known all over the world, and that has, unhappily for Australia, done much to create the popular fallacy that the soil and climate of the interior are such as preclude comfortable settlement by whites. Sturt's graphic account is at times somewhat misleading, and the lapse of years has proved his denunciatory judgment of the fitness of the interior for human habitation to have been hasty. But if we examine the circumstances in which he received the impressions he has recorded, we must grant that he had considerable justification for his statements.

He was a broken and disappointed man, worn out by disease and frustrated hopes, and nearly blind. During six months of his long absence, he had been shut up in his weary depot prison, debarred from attempting the completion of his work, and compelled to watch his friend and companion die a lingering death from scurvy. And when the kindly rains released him, he was doomed to be repulsed by the ever-present desert wastes. No wonder that he despaired of the country, and viewed all its prospects through the heated, treacherous haze of the desert plains. Yet now, close to the ranges where Sturt spent the burning summer months of his detention, there has sprung up one of the inland townships of New South Wales, where men toil just as laboriously as in a more temperate zone.

[Map. Sturt's Route 1844, 1845 and 1846.]

But, though baffled and unable to win the goal he strove for, never did man better deserve success. The instructions that he received from the Home Office were, to reach the centre of the continent, to discover whether mountains or sea existed there, and, if the former, to note the flow and direction of the northern waters, but on no account to follow them down to the north coast. Sturt was instructed to proceed by Mount Arden, a route already tried, condemned, and abandoned by Eyre; and he elected to proceed by way of the Darling. His plan was to follow that river up as far as the Williora, a small western tributary of the Darling, opposite the place whence Mitchell turned back in 1835, after his conflict with the natives, an episode which Sturt found that they bitterly remembered. Poole, Sturt's second in command, resembling Mitchell in figure and appearance, the Darling blacks addressed him as Major, and evinced marked hostility towards him. From Williora, or Laidley's Ponds, Sturt intended to strike north-west, hoping thus to avoid the gloomy environs of Lake Torrens, and the treacherous surface of its bed. At Moorundi, on the Murray, where Eyre was then stationed as Resident Magistrate, the party was mustered and the start made.

In addition to Poole, Sturt was accompanied by Dr. Browne, a thorough bushman and an excellent surgeon, who went as a volunteer and personal friend. With the party as surveyor's draftsman, went McDouall Stuart, whose fame as explorer was afterwards destined nearly to equal that of his leader. In addition there were twelve men, eleven horses, one spring-cart, three bullock-drays, thirty bullocks, one horse-dray, two hundred sheep, four kangaroo dogs, and two sheep dogs.

Eyre accompanied the expedition as far as Lake Victoria, which they reached on the 10th of September, 1844. On the 11th of October they arrived at Laidley's Ponds. This was the place from which Sturt intended to leave the Darling for the interior, and where he expected to find, from the account given him by the natives, a fair-sized creek heading from a low range, visible at a distance to the north-west. But he found the stream to be a mere surface channel, distributing the flood water of the Darling into some shallow lakes about seven or eight miles distant. Sturt despatched Poole and Stuart to this range to see if they could obtain a glimpse of the country beyond to the north-west.

They returned with the rather startling intelligence that, from the top of a peak of the range, Poole had seen a large lake studded with islands.

Although in his published journal, written some time after his return, Sturt makes light of Poole's fancied lake, which of course was the effect of a mirage, at that time his ardent fancy, and the extreme likelihood of the existence of a lake in that locality, made him believe that he was on the eve of an important discovery. In a letter to Mr. Morphett of Adelaide, he wrote:—

"Poole has just returned from the range. I have not time to write over again. He says there are high ranges to the North and North-West, and water, a sea, extending along the horizon from South-West by South and then East of North, in which there are a number of lofty ranges and islands, as far as the eye can reach. What is all this? To-morrow we start for the ranges, and then for the waters, the strange waters, on which boat never swam and over which flag never floated. But both shall ere long. We have the heart of the interior laid open to us, and shall be off with a flowing sheet in a few days. Poole says that the sea was a deep blue, and that in the midst of it was a conical island of great height."

Poor Sturt! No boat was ever to float upon that visionary sea, nor flag to wave over those dream-born waters. To those who know the experiences that awaited the expedition, it is pathetic to read of the leader's soaring hopes, as delusive as the desert mirage itself.

The whole of the party now removed to a small shallow lakelet, the commencement of the Williora channel (Laidley's Ponds). After a short excursion to the distant ranges reported by Poole, Sturt, accompanied by Browne and two men, went ahead for the purpose of finding water of a sufficient permanency to remove the whole of the party to. At the small lake where they were then encamped, there was the ever-present likelihood of a conflict with the pugnacious natives of the Darling. He was successful in finding what he wanted, and on the 4th of November the main body of the expedition, finally leaving the Darling basin, removed to the new water depot.

The next day Sturt, with Browne and three men and the cart, started on another trip in search of water ahead. This was found in small quantities, but rain coming on, Sturt returned and sent Poole out again to search while the camp was being moved. On his return, Poole reported having seen some brackish lakes, and also having caught sight of Eyre's Mount Serle. They were now well on the western slope of the Barrier Range, and, but for the providential discovery of a fine creek to the northward, which was called Flood's creek, after one of the party, they would have been unable to maintain their position. To Flood's creek the camp was removed, and Sturt congratulated himself on the steady and satisfactory progress he was making.



The party now left the Barrier Range, and followed a course to another range further north, staying for some time at a small lagoon while engaged in making an examination of the country ahead. On the 27th of January, 1845, they camped on a creek rising in a small range, and affording, at its head, a fine supply of permanent water. When upon its banks the explorers pitched their tents, they little thought that it would be the 17th of the following July before they would strike camp again. This was the Depot Glen, and an extract from Sturt's journal depicts the situation of the party:—

"It was not, however, until after we had run down every creek in the neighbourhood, and had traversed the country in every direction, that the truth flashed across my mind, and it became evident to me that we were locked up in the desolate and heated region into which we had penetrated, as effectually as if we had wintered at the Pole. It was long, indeed, ere I could bring myself to believe that so great a misfortune had overtaken us, but so it was. Providence had, in its all wise purposes, guided us to the only spot in that wide-spread desert where our wants could have been permanently supplied, but had there stayed our further progress into a region that almost appears to be forbidden ground."

This then was Sturt's prison — a small creek marked by a line of gum trees, issuing from a glen in a low range. By a kindly freak of nature, enough water had been confined in this glen to provide a permanent supply for the exploring party and their animals, during the long term of their detention.

Of Sturt's existence and occupation during this dreary period little can be said. He tried to find an avenue of escape in every direction, until convinced of the futility of the attempt; sometimes encouraged and lured on by the shallow pools in some fragmentary creek, at others, seeing nothing before him but hopeless aridity. Now, too, he found himself attacked with what he then thought to be rheumatism, but which proved to be scurvy. Poole and Browne were afflicted in the same manner.

Sturt made one desperate attempt to the north during his imprisonment in the Depot Glen, and succeeded in reaching a point one mile beyond the 28th parallel, but further north he could not advance, nor did he find any inducement to risk the safety of his party.

There passed weeks of awesome monotony, relieved by one strange episode. From the apparently lifeless wilderness around them there strayed an old aboriginal into their camp. He was hungry and athirst, and in complete keeping with the gaunt waste from which he had emerged. The dogs attacked him when he approached, but he stood his ground and fought them valiantly until they were called off. His whole demeanour was calm and courageous, and he showed neither surprise nor timidity. He drank greedily when water was given to him, ate voraciously, and accepted every service rendered to him as a duty to be discharged by one fellow-being to another when cut off in the desert from his kin. He stopped at the camp for some time and recognised the boat, explaining that it was upside down, as of course it was, and pointing to the North-West as the region where they would use it, thus raising Sturt's hopes once more. Whence he came they could not divine, nor could he explain to them. After a fortnight he departed, giving them to understand that he would return, but they never saw him again.

"With him" writes Sturt pathetically, "all our hopes vanished, for even the presence of this savage was soothing to us, and so long as he remained we indulged in anticipations for the future. From the time of his departure a gloomy silence pervaded the camp; we were indeed placed under the most trying circumstances: everything combined to depress our spirits and exhaust our patience. We had witnessed migration after migration of the feathered tribes, to that point to which we were so anxious to push our way. Flights of cockatoos, of parrots, of pigeons, and of bitterns; birds also whose notes had cheered us in the wilderness, all had taken the same road to a better and more hospitable region."

And now the water began to sink with frightful rapidity, and all thought that surely the end must be near. Hoping against hope, Sturt laid his plans to start as soon as the drought broke up. He himself was to proceed north and west, whilst poor Poole, reduced to a frightful condition by scurvy, was to be sent carefully back to the Darling, as the only means of saving his life.



On the 12th and 13th of June the rain came, and the drought-beleaguered invaders of the desert were relieved. But Poole did not live to profit by the rain. Every arrangement was made for his comfort that their circumstances permitted, but on the first day's journey he died. His body was brought back and buried under the elevation which they called the Red Hill, and which is now known as Mount Poole, three and a-half miles from Depot Camp.

Sturt's way was now open. He again despatched the party selected to return to the Darling, whose departure had been interrupted by Poole's untimely death, and, with renewed hope, made his preparations for the long-denied north-west.

Having first removed the depot to a better grassed locality, he made a short trip to the west. On the 4th of August he found himself on the edge of an immense shallow, sandy basin, in which water was standing in detached sheets, "as blue as indigo, and as salt as brine." This he took to be a part of Lake Torrens. He returned to the new depot, called Fort Grey, which was sixty or seventy miles to the north-west of the Glen, and arranged matters for his final departure.

McDouall Stuart was left in charge of the depot. Dr. Browne accompanied the leader, and on the 14th of August a start was made. For some distance, owing to the pools of surface water left by the recent rain, they had no difficulty in keeping a straightforward course. The country they passed over consisted of large, level plains, intersected by sand-ridges; but they crossed numerous creeks with more or less water in all of them. To one of these creeks Sturt gave the name of Strzelecki. Finally they reached a well-grassed region which greatly cheered them with the prospect of success it held out. Suddenly they were confronted with a wall of sand; and for nearly twenty miles they toiled over successive ridges. Fortunately they found both water and grass, but the unexpected check to their brighter anticipations was depressing. Nor did a walk to the extremity of one of the ridges serve to raise their spirits.

Sturt saw before him what he describes as an immense plain, of a dark purple hue, with a horizon like that of the sea, boundless in the direction in which he wished to proceed. This was Sturt's Stony Desert. That night they camped within its dreary confines, and during the next day crossed an earthy plain, with here and there a few bushes of polygonum growing beside some straggling channel in which they occasionally found a little muddy rain-water remaining. At night when they camped just before dusk, they sighted some hills to the north, and, on examining them through the telescope, they discerned dark shadows on the faces, as if produced by cliffs. Next morning they made for these hills, in the hope of finding a change of country and feed for the horses, but they were disappointed. Sand ridges in repulsive array confronted them once more. "Even the animals," writes Sturt, "appeared to regard them with dismay."

Over plains and sand dunes, the former full of yawning cracks and holes, the party pushed on, subsisting on scanty pools of muddy water and fast-sinking native wells. On the 3rd of September, Flood, the stockman who was riding in the lead, lifted his hat and waved it on high, calling to the others that a large creek was in sight.

When the main party came up, they feasted their eyes on a beautiful watercourse, its bed studded with pools of water and its banks clothed with grass. This creek Sturt named Eyre's Creek, and it was an important discovery in the drainage system of the region that he was then traversing.

Along this new-found watercourse, they were enabled to make easy stages for five days, when the course of the creek was lost; nor could any continuation be traced. The lagoons, too, that were found a short distance from the banks, proved to be intensely salt. Repeated efforts to continue his journey to other points of the compass only led Sturt amongst the terrible sandhills, their parallel rows separated by barren plains encrusted with salt. Sturt now came to the erroneous conclusion that he had reached the head of Eyre's Creek, and that further progress was effectually barred by a waterless tract of country. In fact, he was then within reach of a well-watered river, along which he could have travelled right up to the main dividing range of the northern coast. But Sturt was baffled in the most depressed area on the surface of the continent, where rivers and creeks lost their identity in the numberless channels into which they divided before reaching their final home in the thirsty shallows of the then unknown Lake Eyre. There was neither sign nor clue afforded him; his men were sick, and any further progress would jeopardise his retreat. There was nothing for it but to fall back once more; and, after a toilsome journey, they reached Fort Grey on the 2nd of October.

Sturt's last effort had been made to the west of north; he now made up his mind for a final effort due north. Before starting, however, he begged of Browne, who was still suffering, to retreat, while the way was yet open, to the Darling. This Browne resolutely refused to do; stating that it was his intention to share the fate of the expedition. The 9th of October saw Sturt again under way to the seemingly forbidden north, Stuart and two fresh men accompanying him. On the second day they reached Strzelecki Creek, and on the 13th they came on to the bank of a magnificent channel, with fine trees growing on its grassy banks, and abundance of water in the bed. This was the now well-known Cooper's Creek, which Sturt, on his late trip, had crossed unnoticed, as it was then dry and divided into several channels on their route. This was the most important discovery made in connection with the lake system, Cooper's Creek being one of the far-reaching affluents, its tributaries draining the inland slopes of the main dividing range.

Sturt, on making this unexpected discovery, was undecided whether to follow Cooper's Creek up to the eastward or persevere in his original intention of pushing to the north. A thunder-storm falling at the time made him adhere to his original determination, and defer the examination of the new river until his return.

Seven days after crossing Cooper's Creek, he had the negative satisfaction of seeing his gloomy forebodings fulfilled. Once more he gazed over the dreary waste of the stony desert, unchanged and repellant as ever. They crossed it, but were again turned back by sandhill and salt plain, and forced to retrace their steps to Cooper's Creek. This creek Sturt followed up for many days, but found that it came from a more easterly direction than the route he desired to travel along; moreover, the one broad channel that they had commenced to follow became divided into several ana-branches, running through plains subject to inundation. This became so tiring to their now exhausted horses, who were woefully footsore, that he reluctantly turned back. He had found the creek peopled with well-nurtured natives, and the prospects of advancing were brighter than they had ever been; but both Sturt and his men were weak and ill, and the horses almost incapable of further effort. Moreover, he was not certain of his retreat.

As they went down Cooper's Creek on their way back, they found that the water was drying up so rapidly that grave fears were entertained lest Strzelecki's Creek, their main resource in getting back to Fort Grey, should be dry. Fortunately they were in time to find a little muddy fluid left, just enough to serve their needs. Here, though most anxious to get on, they were forced to camp the whole of one day, on account of an extremely fierce hot wind.

Sturt's vivid account of the day spent during the blast of that furnace-like sirocco has been oft quoted. But the reader should remember when reading it that the man who wrote it was in such a weakened condition that he had not sufficient energy left to withstand the hot wind, whilst the shade under which the party sought shelter was of the scantiest description.

They had still a distance of eighty-six miles to cover to get back to Fort Grey, with but little prospect of finding water on the way. After a long and weary ride they reached it, only to find the tents struck, the flag hauled down, and the Fort abandoned. The bad state of the water and the steady diminution of supply had forced Browne to fall back to Depot Glen, riding day and night Sturt reached the old encampment, so exhausted that he could hardly stand after dismounting.

The problem of their final escape had now to be resolved. The water in Depot Creek was reduced so low that they feared there would be none left in Flood's Creek. If this failed, they were once more imprisoned. Browne, now much recovered, undertook the long ride of one hundred and eighteen miles which would decide the question. Preparations had been made for his journey by filling a bullock skin with water, and sending a dray with it as far as possible. On the eighth day he returned.

"Well, Browne," asked Sturt, who was helpless in his tent, "what news? Is it good or bad?" "There is still water in the creek," replied Browne, "but that is all I can say; what there is is as black as ink, and we must make haste, for in a week it will be gone."

The boat that was to have floated over the inland sea was left to rot at Depot Glen. All the heaviest of the stores were abandoned, and the retreat of over two hundred miles commenced.

More bullock-skins were fashioned into water-bags, and with their aid and that of a scanty but kindly shower of rain, they crossed the dry stage to Flood's Creek in safety. Here they found the growth of the vegetation much advanced, and with care, and constant activity in searching ahead for water, they gradually increased the distance from the scene of their sufferings, and approached the Darling. Sturt had to be carried on one of the drays, and lifted on and off at each stopping-place. On the 21st of December, they arrived at the camp of the relief-party under Piesse, at Williorara, and Sturt's last expedition came to an end.

In taking leave of this explorer, we quote a short extract from his Journal to show the exalted character of the man whom Australians should ever regard with the greatest of pride:—

"Circumstances may yet arise to give a value to my recent labours, and my name may be remembered by after generations in Australia as the first who tried to penetrate to its centre. If I failed in that great object, I have one consolation in the retrospect of my past services. My path among savage tribes has been a bloodless one, not but that I have often been placed in situations of risk and danger, when I might have been justified in shedding blood, but I trust I have ever made allowance for human timidity, and respected the customs of the rudest people."

Sturt's health and eyesight had been greatly impaired by his last trip, but although he was for a time almost totally blind, he still managed to discharge the duties of Colonial Secretary. He was at last pensioned by the South Australian Government, and soon afterwards returned to England. He died at his residence at Cheltenham. Though the Home Office had treated him disgracefully during his life, and ignored his services, he lives for ever in the hearts of the Australians as the hero and chief figure of the exploration of their country. When he was on his death-bed, in 1869, the empty title of knighthood was conferred upon him. As he could not enjoy the tardy honour, his widow, who lived until 1887, was graciously allowed to wear the bauble.



CHAPTER 13. BABBAGE AND STUART.

13.1. B. HERSCHEL BABBAGE.



The unsolved problem of the extent and other details of that vast region of salt lakes and flat country then known under the generic name of Lake Torrens still greatly occupied the attention and excited the imaginations of the colonists of South Australia. And the accounts brought back by the different exploring parties were conflicting in the extreme. In 1851, two squatters, named Oakden and Hulkes, out run-hunting, pushed westward of Lake Torrens, and found suitable grazing country. They also discovered a lake of fresh water, and heard from the natives of other lakes to the north-west some fabulous legends of strange animals. Their horses giving in, Oakden and Hulkes returned, but although they applied for a squatting licence for the country they had been over, it was not then settled or stocked. In 1856, Surveyor Babbage made some explorations in the field partly traversed by Eyre and Frome. He penetrated through the plains that were supposed to occupy the central portion of the horseshoe formation at that time associated in the public opinion with Lake Torrens. More fortunate than his predecessors, he found permanent water in a gum-tree creek, and saw some fair-sized sheets of water, one of which he named Blanche Water, or Lake Blanche. Some further excursions led to the discovery of more fresh water and well-grassed pastoral country. The aboriginals, too, directed him to what they said was a crossing-place in that portion of Lake Torrens that had been sighted, in 1845, by Poole and Browne of Captain Sturt's party, when Poole thought he saw an inland sea. Their directions, however, proved unreliable, or Babbage failed to find the place, for he lost his horse in the attempt to cross the lake.

In 1857, another excursion to the westward of Lake Torrens was made by a Mr. Campbell, who discovered a creek of fresh water, which he called the Elizabeth. He also visited Lake Torrens, of which he reported in similar terms to those of previous explorers — that it was surrounded with barren country.

In April of the same year, a survey conducted by Deputy Surveyor-General Goyder, over the same country as that lately explored by Babbage, led to some absurd mistakes. A few miles north of Blanche Water he came to many surface springs surrounding a fine lagoon. To the north of them was an isolated hill, which he called Weathered Hill. From the summit of this hill he had a curious example of the effects of refraction in this region in a similar illusion to that which suggested Poole's inland sea. To the northward he saw a belt of gigantic gum-trees, and beyond them what appeared to be a sheet of water with elevated land on the far side. To the eastward was another large lake. But all this was but the glamourie of the desert — on closer examination the gigantic gums dwindled down to stunted bushes, and the mountainous ground to broken clods of earth.

But the greatest surprise reserved for Goyder was at Lake Torrens, where he found the water quite fresh. He described the Lake as stretching from fifteen to twenty miles to the north-west, with a water horizon, with an extensive bay forming to the southward; while to the north, a bluff headland and perpendicular cliffs were clearly to be discerned with the telescope. From the appearance of the flood-marks, Goyder came to the conclusion that there was little or no rise and fall in the lake, drawing the natural conclusion that its size was such as not to be influenced appreciably by flood waters, but that it absorbed them without showing any variation in its level.

Adelaide was overjoyed at the news. The threatening desert that hemmed in their fair province to the north was suddenly converted into a land of milk and honey. The Surveyor-General, Colonel Freeling, immediately started out, taking with him both a boat and an iron punt with which to float on these new waters. But there was a sudden fall to their hopes when a letter was received from him stating that the cliffs, the bay, and the head-lands were all built up on the airy foundation of a mirage. The elves and sprites of this desolate region had been playing a hoax upon Goyder's party. But it is no wonder that Goyder had been so open to deception after unexpectedly finding fresh water in the lake that had been so long known as salter than the sea.

On reaching the lake, Freeling found the water still almost fresh; but one of Goyder's men who accompanied him, told him that it had already receded half-a-mile since the latter's visit. An attempt to float the punt was made, but after dragging it through mud and a few inches of water for a quarter of a mile, the men abandoned the attempt as hopeless. Freeling and some of the party then started to wade through the slush, but after proceeding three miles, and then sounding only six inches of water, they returned. Some of the more adventurous extended their muddy wade, but only met with a similar result. Lake Torrens was re-invested with its evil name, only somewhat shrunken in proportions.

In the same year, 1857, Stephen Hack started with a party from Streaky Bay to examine the Gawler Range of Eyre, and investigate the country west of Lake Torrens. He reached the Gawler Range and examined the country very carefully, finding numerous fresh-water springs, and large plains covered with both grass and saltbush. He also discovered a large salt lake, Lake Gairdner. Simultaneously with Hack's expedition, a party under Major Warburton was out in the same neighbourhood; in fact, Hack's party crossed Warburton's tracks on one or two occasions. Strange to say, the reports of the two were flatly contradictory. Warburton described the country as dry and arid; but Hack's account was distinctly favourable. Of the two men, however, it is most probable that Hack possessed the more experience and knowledge of country, and, moreover, Time, the great arbitrator, has endorsed his words.

The year 1857 saw much exploration done in South Australia. One party, consisting of Swinden, Campbell, Thompson, and Stock, at about seventy miles from the head of Spencer's Gulf, found good pastoral country and a permanent water-hole called by the natives Pernatty. to the north they came upon Campbell's former discovery of the Elizabeth, but their provisions failing they were forced to return.

A month afterwards Swinden started again from Pernatty. North of the Gawler Range he found available pastoral country, which became known as Swinden's country. During this year also, Miller and Dutton explored the country at the back of Fowler's Bay. Forty miles to the north they saw treeless, grassy plains stretching far inland, but could find no permanent water. Warburton afterwards reported in depreciatory terms of this region; but Delisser and Hardwicke, who also visited it, stated that it would make first-class pastoral country if only surface water could be obtained. During the whole of Warburton's career, his judgment of the pastoral value of country seems to have been lamentably defective. He made no allowance for the varying nature of the seasons. A suggestion that he made to the South Australian Government to explore the interior, which had turned back such men as Sturt and Gregory, with the aid of the police, verges on the ludicrous.

In 1858, the South Australian Government voted a sum of money to fit out a party to continue the northern explorations. This party was put under the leadership of Babbage; but he was not given a free hand, being hampered with official instructions, and there being no allowance made for unforeseen exigencies. His instructions were to examine the country between Lakes Torrens and Gairdner, and to map the respective western and eastern shores of the two lakes, so as to remove for the future any doubt as to their actual formation and accurate position. This alone, apart from any extended exploration, meant a work of considerable time; but, unfortunately for the surveyor in charge, the general public was just then eager for fresh discoveries of available pastoral land, and was inclined to regard survey work as of secondary importance. It took several months to complete the survey work of the two lakes, and when Babbage returned to Port Augusta he found that Harris, the second in command of his depot camp, had started to return to Adelaide with many of the drays and horses. Babbage rode one hundred and sixty miles before he overtook him at Mount Remarkable, and there learned that the South Australian Government had changed its official mind with regard to the conduct of the expedition, and had decided that it should be conducted in future with pack-horses only.

It was A.C. Gregory's arrival in Adelaide with pack-horses from his last expedition down the Barcoo that had led to this change of tactics. Charles Gregory, who had accompanied his brother, was now engaged by the Government to overtake Babbage and acquaint him with their intention, but when he reached Port Augusta, Gregory took it upon himself to order the drays home, Babbage being away surveying. Babbage overtook them and ordered them back; but pleading Government orders, they refused to return. Babbage wrote to the authorities pointing out the unfairness of their action, and, mustering up a small party, returned to continue his work with six months' provisions.

On this occasion, Babbage gave more time to discovery than he had done before. He went out beyond the boundaries of his survey, and pushed on to Chambers Creek, so called by Stuart, who discovered it while Babbage was busy at Lake Gairdner. Babbage traced Chambers Creek into Lake Eyre, and was thus the first discoverer of this lake, which he called Lake Gregory. He found a range which he called Hermit Range, but from its crest discerned no sign of Lake Torrens, thus settling a certain limit to its extension to the north. He made further explorations to the west of Lake Gregory, now Lake Eyre, and found some hot springs. Meanwhile, during the time he was making these researches, the Government had, in a very high-handed manner, appointed Warburton to supersede him. Warburton started out to find Babbage, taking Charles Gregory as his second. Failing to find him at the Elizabeth, he followed and overtook him at the newly-discovered Lake Gregory. Warburton made a few discoveries while seeking for Babbage, amongst them the Douglas, a creek which was afterwards of great assistance to Stuart, and the Davenport Range; and he also came upon some fair pastoral country.

Babbage's surveys and explorations had done much to clear up the mystery and confusion that had hitherto obscured the geography of the salt lake region. His discovery of Lake Eyre (Gregory) and of the complete isolation of Lake Torrens, reduced the component parts of that huge saline basin to some sort of method and order. In addition to these achievements, Surveyor Parry made some further discoveries both of fresh water and available pastoral country to the eastward of the Lake.

B. Herschel Babbage was the eldest son of the well-known inventor of the calculating machine. He had been educated as an engineer, and for a considerable time had followed his profession in Europe. He had been engaged on several main lines in England, and had worked in conjunction with the celebrated Brunel. He had also been commissioned by the Government of Piedmont to report on a line across the Alps by way of Mount Cenis. He had remained in Italy some years until his work was interrupted by the revolution. He had returned to England, and had subsequently come to South Australia in 1851, in the ship Hydaspes. He died at his residence, in 1878, at St. Mary's, South Road, where he had a vineyard.

13.2. JOHN MCDOUALL STUART.



John McDouall Stuart, the great explorer of the centre of Australia, arrived in South Australia in 1839. His first experience of Australian exploration was sufficiently trying, gained as it was when he was acting as a draughtsman with Captain Sturt on his last arduous expedition. But it had kindled in him a high ardour for discovery, and fostered a stubborn resolution to carry through whatever he undertook.

He commenced his early explorations when in a position to do so independently, to the north-west of Swinden's country, in search of some locality called by the natives Wingillpin. Not finding it, he came to the strange conclusion that Wingillpin and Cooper's Creek were one and the same, although he was now on a different watershed. He also, at that period, seems to have entertained somewhat extensive notions of the course of Cooper's Creek, as in one part of his Journal he remarks:—

"My only hope of cutting Cooper's Creek is on the other side of the range. The plain we crossed to-day resembles those of the Cooper, also the grasses. If it is not there, it must run to the north-west, and form the Glenelg of Captain Grey."

Now, although we know that Grey held rather extravagant notions of the importance of the Glenelg, even he would not have thought it possible for the Glenelg to be the outlet of such a mighty river as Cooper's Creek would have become by the time it reached the north-west coast.

Stuart's horses were now too footsore to proceed over the stony country he found himself then in, and he had no spare shoes with him. Failing therefore to find the promised land of Wingillpin, although he had passed over much good and well-watered country, he turned to the south-west, and made some explorations in the neighbourhood of Lake Gairdner. Before this, however, he had found and named Chambers Creek. From Lake Gairdner, he steered for Fowler's Bay, and his description of some of the country he passed is anything but inviting. From a spur of the high peak that he named Mount Finke, he saw:—

"A prospect gloomy in the extreme: I could see a long distance, but nothing met the eye save a dense scrub, as black and dismal as night."

[Map. Stuart's Routes 1858, 1859, 1860, 1861, 1862; Burke and Wills's Route 1860 and 1861.]

From this point the party passed into a sandy spinifex desert, which Stuart says was worse than Sturt's; there had been a little salt-bush there, but here there was nothing but spinifex to be found, and the barren ground provided no food of any kind for the horses.

The state of affairs was becoming desperate with the little band, as their provisions were nearly finished; and though the leader was tempted to persist in the search for good pastoral country, he was at last forced to abandon the search and beat a hasty retreat. Dense scrub and the same "dreary dismal desert," as he calls it in his Journal, surrounded them day after day. Tired out and half-starved they reached the coast, and had but two meals left to carry them to Streaky Bay, where they found relief at Gibson's station. Here the sudden change from starvation to a full diet invalided most of them, and Stuart himself was very ill for some days. Finally they reached Thompson's station at Mount Arden, and there Stuart's first expedition terminated.

But this severe test only whetted Stuart's appetite for further exploration, and in April, 1859, he made another start. After crossing over some of the already-traversed country, Hergott, one of his companions, found the now well-known springs that bear his name. Stuart crossed his former discovery of Chambers Creek, and made for the Davenport Range, discovered by Warburton, finding many of the mound springs that characterize some parts of the interior. On the 6th of June he discovered a large creek, which he called the Neale. It ran through very good country, and Stuart followed it down, hoping to find it increase in volume and value as he went. In this he was not disappointed, as large plains covered with salt-bush and grass were found, and the party encountered several more springs. After satisfying himself of the extent and economic value of the country he had found, Stuart was obliged to return; for his horses' shoes had again worn out, and he had a lively and painful remembrance of the misery which his horses had suffered before from the lack of them.

In November of the same year, he made a third expedition in the vicinity of Lake Eyre, but there is little of interest attaching to the Journal of this trip, as his course was mostly over closely explored country. He reached the Neale again, and instituted a survey of the promising pastoral country he had traversed during his last trip, approaching at times to within sight of what he calls in his Journal Lake Torrens, but which in reality was what is now known as Lake Eyre. All these minor expeditions of Stuart's may be looked upon as preparatory to his great struggle to find an available passage through the unknown fastnesses of the centre of the continent.

It was in 1860 that Stuart made the first of his daring and stubborn attempts to cross Australia from south to north. The South Australian Government had offered a standing reward of 2,000 pounds for the man who should first succeed in this undertaking.

Stuart's party on his first trip was but a very small one: three men in all, with but thirteen horses. It reads lilliputian compared with the princely cavalcade that later on set out with Burke to travel over comparatively well-known country, involving only a short excursion through a land without natural difficulties or obstacles; and yet it actually achieved the greatest part of the task set it.

Stuart started from Chambers Creek, but for part of the journey he was of course travelling over country that was fairly well-known by that time. After passing the Neale, he entered untrodden country, which proved to be good available pastoral land. Numerous well-watered creeks were passed, which were named respectively the Frew, the Finke, and the Stevenson, and on the 6th of April they reached a hill of a remarkable shape, which had for some time attracted and excited their attention and curiosity. They found it to be a column of sandstone, on the apex of a hill. The hill was but a low one of a few hundred feet in height, but the sandstone column that surmounted it was one hundred and fifty feet in height and twenty feet in width. This striking object was named by Stuart Chambers Pillar, to commemorate a friend who had assisted him greatly in his explorations. It stood amongst other elevations of fantastic shapes and grotesque formations, resembling ruined forts and castles. On the 9th of April they sighted two remarkable bluffs, and on the 12th reached the range of which the bluffs formed the centre. The eastern bluff was called Brinkley Bluff and the western Hanson Bluff; the range, which is now well-known as a leading geographical feature of Australia, and on which the most elevated peaks in the interior have since been found, Stuart named the MacDonnell Range, after the then Governor of South Australia. The little band crossed the range, which was rough but had good grass on its slopes. There was, however, a scarcity of water; for they were now approaching the tropical line, and on reaching the northern slope of the range found themselves amongst spinifex and scrub, and obliged to undergo two nights without water for the horses. At a high peak, which was named Mount Freeling, they found a small supply; and as it was now evident that there was dry country ahead, a more careful search was made before pushing any further forward, in order to ensure certain means of retreat. Fortunately they found, amongst some ledges of rock, a large natural reservoir, which promised to be permanent, and capable of supplying their wants on their homeward way.

On the 22nd of April, Stuart camped in the centre of Australia, on the spot which his former leader, Sturt, had vainly undergone so much suffering to reach; and his feeling of elation must have been tempered with regret that his old leader was not then with him to share this success. About two miles and a half to the North-North-East there was a tolerably high hill which he called in reality Central Mount Sturt. It is now, however, erroneously called Stuart, owing to the publishers of his diary having misread his manuscript.

Having, in company with his tried companion Kekwick, climbed the mount, he erected a cairn of stones at the top and hoisted the Union Jack. They then recommenced their northern journey. That night they camped without finding water, but the next morning were lucky enough to get a permanent supply. Then ensued much delay, caused by fruitless attempts to strike either to the eastward or the westward. Stuart tried on several occasions to reach the head of the Victoria River, but failed, and sacrificed some horses. On a creek he called the Phillips, some natives were encountered who, according to Stuart, made and answered a masonic sign.

To the north of this spot, the explorers came to a large gum-tree creek, with very fair-sized sheets of water in it. As they followed down, they passed an encampment of natives, but kept steadily on their course without interfering with them. Not finding any water lower down the creek, the party had to return, and when close to the creek at the point where they had crossed that morning, they were suddenly surrounded by a mob of armed and painted savages, who had emerged unexpectedly from concealment in a clump of scrub. To all attempts at peaceful parley they returned showers of boomerangs and clubs, until the whites were compelled in self-defence to fire on them. Even then they were not deterred from following the party, even up to the camp of the night before. This incident caused Stuart to hesitate. His party was so small that the loss or even disablement of one man would have crippled the expedition; and they had already lost a good many horses. He therefore wisely decided to fall back, as they had penetrated far enough to prove that the passage of the continent could be effected with a few more men. It was on the 27th of June that he began his homeward march, and on the 26th of August he reached Brodie's camp at Hamilton Springs, with the strength of all much reduced, and Stuart himself suffering from scurvy.

After the result of Stuart's journey had been reported in Adelaide, and it was seen how inadequate means only had led to his defeat, the Government voted 2,500 pounds to equip a better-organized party; of this he was to take command.

Stuart judged it best to keep his old track by way of the Finke and the Hugh. On the 12th of April they arrived at the Bonney, and finding it running strong, with abundance of good feed on the banks, they were betrayed into following it down; but it soon spread abroad and was lost in a large plain. Leaving the Bonney, they adhered to the old route, and reached Tennant's Creek on the 21st of April, and four days afterwards they were on the scene of the attack that had been made on them at Attack Creek. But although the tracks of the natives were numerous, the explorers were, at this time, permitted to pass on in peace. Keeping at the foot of the low range, which there has an approximate northerly and southerly direction, Stuart crossed many creeks which promised long courses where they formed in the range, but which were all alike lost when they reached the level country. On the 4th of May they attained to the northern termination of this range, which he called the Ashburton Range. Here he made several attempts to the north and north-west, but could discover neither water nor watercourses in those directions; nothing indeed but plains, beautifully grassed, but heavy to ride over and yielding under the horses' feet. Beyond these plains, the country changed for the worse, and became sandy and scrubby. On the 16th of May he encountered a new description of scrub that grew in a very obstructive manner, and is now known as Stuart's Desert Hedgewood.

On the 23rd he found a magnificent sheet of permanent water which he called the Newcastle Waters, and at first he judged that a clear way north was now assured. But he was deluded, for beyond these waters he could not advance his party a mile; north, north-east, and north-west, there was the one outlook — endless grassy plains, terminating in dense scrubby forest country. He had to give up all hope for the present, and return to Adelaide.

Such however was the confidence of the authorities in him, and such his own energy, that in less than a month after his arrival in Adelaide he was on his way to Chambers Creek to make preparations for a fresh departure. His last two journeys had proved the existence of a long line of good country, fairly well-watered; and although beyond it he had not been able to gain a footing, still there was no knowing what a fresh endeavour would bring to light.

He had brought his party back in safety, with the loss of only a few horses, and had actually reached in point of position as low a latitude as the Victorian explorers had done, and that with a more difficult country to travel through, without camels, and with an inferior equipment in all other respects.

It is not necessary again to follow Stuart's horse-tracks over the northern way he was now pursuing for the third time. On the 14th of April, 1862, we find him encamped at the northern end of Newcastle Waters, once more about to force a passage through the forest of waterless scrub to the north. On the second day he was partly successful, finding an isolated waterhole, surrounded by conglomerate rocks. This he called Frew's Pond; and it is now a well-known camping-place for travellers on the overland telegraph line.

Past this spot he was not able to make any progress. Twice he made strenuous but vain efforts to reach some tributary of the Victoria River. He then spent many days riding through dense mulga and hedgewood scrub. At length, after much hope deferred, finding a few scanty waterholes that did not serve the purpose he had in view, he succeeded in striking the head of a chain of ponds running in a northerly direction. These being followed down, led him to the head of the creek now called Daly Waters Creek, and finally to the large waterhole on which the present telegraph station bearing the name of Daly Waters, stands. The creek was then lost in a swamp, and Stuart was unable to find the channel where it reformed, which has since been named the Birdum. Missing this water-guide, Stuart worked his way to the eastward, to a creek he named the Strangways, which led him down to the Roper River, a river which he had never striven to reach, his sole aim being the Victoria. He crossed the Roper, and followed up a northern tributary, which he named after his constant friend John Chambers.

Scarcity of water was now a thing of the past, but his stock of spare horseshoes had to be most jealously guarded, for his horses were beginning to fall lame, the country he was on was very stony, and he was far removed from Adelaide. From the Chambers he came to the lower course of a creek called by Leichhardt Flying-Fox Creek, re-named by Stuart the Katherine, the name it now bears. Thence he struck across the stony tableland and descended on the head waters of a river which he christened the Adelaide, and on following this river down he found himself in rich tropical scenery, which told him that at last he was approaching the sea-shore.

On the 24th of July he turned a little to the north-east, intending to strike the sea-beach and travel along it to the mouth of the Adelaide. He told only two of the party of the eventful moment awaiting them. As they rode on, Thring, who was riding ahead, suddenly called out, "The Sea," which so took the majority by surprise that they were some time before they understood what was meant, and then three hearty cheers were given.

At this, his first point of contact with the ocean, Stuart dipped his feet and hands in the sea, as at last he gazed across the water he had so perseveringly striven for years to reach.

He attempted to get to the mouth of the Adelaide River along the beach, but found it too boggy for the horses. Wishing to husband the forces at his command, Stuart wisely resolved to push no further; he had a space cleared where they were, and a tall sapling stripped of its boughs to serve as a flagstaff. On this he hoisted the Union Jack which he had carried with him. A record of their arrival, contained in an air-tight case, was then buried at the foot of the impromptu staff, and Stuart cut his initials on the largest tree he could find. The tree has since been found and recognised, but the buried memorial has not been discovered. More fortunate than the ill-fated Burke, Stuart surveyed the open sea from his point of contact with the ocean, instead of having to be content with some mangrove trees and salt water.

McDouall Stuart, whose last expedition we have thus followed out to its successful end, is rightly considered the man to whom the credit for the first crossing the continent is due. His victory was all his own; he had followed in no other person's footsteps; he had crossed the true centre, and he had made the coast at a point much further to the north than that reached by Burke and Wills, their journey having been considerably shortened by its northern end being placed on the southern shore of the great gulf that bites so deeply into north Australia. Along Stuart's track there is now erected the Overland Telegraph Line, an enduring monument to his indomitable perseverance.

Stuart's health was fast failing, and his horses were sadly reduced in strength. He therefore started back the day after the consummation of his dearest ambition. On his way south, after leaving Newcastle Waters, he found the water in many of the short creeks heading from the Ashburton Range to be rapidly diminishing; in some there was none left, in others it was fast drying. The horses commenced to give in rapidly one after the other, and more were lost on successive dry stages. Stuart himself thought that he would never live to see the settled districts. Scurvy had brought him down to a lamentable state, and after all his hard-won success, it seemed as though he would not profit by it. His right hand had become useless to him, and his eyes lost power of sight after sunset. He could not undergo the pain of riding, and a stretcher had to be slung between two horses to carry him on. With painful slowness they crept along until they reached Mount Margaret, the first station. Here the leader, reduced to a mere skeleton, was furnished with a little relief; and after resting and gaining a little strength, he rode on to Adelaide.

This was Stuart's last expedition; for he never recovered his health nor former eyesight. He was rewarded by the government of the colony which he had served so well, and was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society. He went to reside in England, where he died in the year 1869, on the 16th of July.



CHAPTER 14. BURKE AND WILLS.



We have now to deal with an exploring expedition of greater notoriety than that of any similar enterprise in the annals of Australia, though its results in the way of actual exploration in the true meaning of the term were quite insignificant. The expedition could not reasonably hope to reveal any new geographical conditions; for the nature of the country to be traversed was fairly well-known: there was no such expanse of unknown territory along the suggested course of travel as to justify the anticipation of any discovery of magnitude. Both Kennedy and Gregory had followed much the same line of route when tracing the course of the Barcoo and Cooper's Creek, a short distance to the eastward. The only apparent motive for the expedition seems to have been not particularly creditable, the desire to outdo Stuart, who after nearly accomplishing the task might well have been allowed the honour of completing it. But Time is after all the great arbitrator: Stuart re-entered Adelaide successful, on the same day that the bodies of Burke and Wills arrived for shipment to Melbourne.

Robert O'Hara Burke was born in the county of Galway, in Ireland, in 1821. He was the second son of John Hardiman Burke, of St. Clerans, and was educated in Belgium. In 1840 he entered the Austrian army, in which he rose to the rank of Captain. In 1848 he joined the Royal Irish Constabulary, but five years later emigrated to Tasmania. Thence he went to Victoria, where he entered the local police force, and became an Inspector. Such was his position when he was offered the command of the expedition which ended in his death.

William John Wills was born at Totnes, in Devonshire. He was the son of a medical man, and after his arrival in Victoria, in 1852, he led for a time a bush life on the Edwards River. He was later employed as a surveyor in Melbourne, and then became assistant to Professor Neumayer at the Melbourne Observatory, a post he quitted in order to act as assistant-surveyor on the ill-starred journey.

Sentiment, and an hysterical sentiment at that, seems to have dominated this expedition throughout. There was no urgent necessity for Victoria to equip and send forth an exploring expedition. Her rich and compact little province was known from end to end, and she had no surplus territory in which to open up fresh fields of pastoral occupation for her sons. But her people became possessed with the exploring spirit, and the planning and execution of the scheme was a signal indication of national patriotism. And if sense and not sentiment had marked the counsel, the results might have conferred rich benefit upon Australia.

The necessary funds were made up as follows: 6,000 pounds voted by Government; 1,000 pounds presented by Mr. Ambrose Kyte; and the balance of the first expenditure of 12,000 pounds made up by public subscription. But the final cost of the expedition and of the relief parties amounted to 57,000 pounds. And the exploratory work done by the different relief parties far and away exceeded in geographical results the small amount effected by the original expedition.

A committee of management was appointed, and to his interest with this committee Burke owed his elevation to the position of leader. He seems to have been supported by that sort of general testimony which fits a man to apply for nearly any position; but of special aptitude and training for the work to be done he had none. He was frank, openhearted, impetuous, and endowed with all those qualities which made him a great favourite with women; moreover, his service in the Austrian army had given people an exaggerated notion of his ability to command and organize. It would appear on the whole that his appointment was due solely to the influence he wielded, and to his personal popularity.

Wills appears to have been a man gifted with many of the qualities essential for efficient discharge of the duties and responsibilities appertaining to the post he held; but his amiable disposition allowed him to be influenced too readily in council by the rash and foolish judgment of his impetuous superior. If, for instance, he had persisted in combating Burke's incomprehensible plan of leaving the depot for Mount Hopeless, the last fatality would never have occurred.

When the expedition left Melbourne, it was amid the shouts and hurrahs of acclaiming thousands, who probably had not the faintest idea of the easy task that the explorers with their imposing retinue and outfit had before them. In fact, with all the resources at Burke's command, a favourable season and good open country, the excursion would have been a mere picnic to most men of experience. A number of camels had been specially imported from India at a cost of 5,500 pounds. G.J. Landells came to the country in charge of them, and had been appointed second in command. Long before they left the settled districts, Burke quarrelled with him, whereupon he resigned and returned to Melbourne. There he openly declared that under Burke's control the expedition would assuredly meet with disaster. Wills was then appointed second by Burke, and Wright, who was supposed to be acquainted with the locality which they were approaching, was engaged as third, another most unfortunate selection. Besides those already mentioned, there were Dr. Hermann Beckler, medical officer and botanist, and Dr. Ludwig Becker, artist, naturalist, and geologist, ten white assistants, and three camel-drivers.

The expedition in full reached Menindie on the Darling, where Wright joined them. On the 19th of October, 1860, Burke, Wills, six men, five horses and sixteen camels, left Menindie for Cooper's Creek. Wright went with them two hundred miles to indicate the best route, and then returned to take charge of the main body waiting at Menindie. On the 11th of November, Burke with the advance party reached Cooper's Creek, where they camped and awaited the arrival of Wright with the rest. Grass and water were both plentiful, and the journey had hitherto proved no more arduous than an ordinary over-landing trip.

The long delay and inaction worked sadly upon Burke's active and impatient temperament, and he suddenly announced his intention to subdivide his party and, with three men, to start across the belt of unknown country — a distance of five hundred miles at the furthest — that separated him from Gregory's track round the Gulf. Although his lavish outfit had been purchased specially to explore this comparatively small extent of land, he thus deliberately left it behind him during the most critical part of the journey. He had with him no means of following up any discoveries he might make, and his botanist and naturalist and geologist were also left behind. He killed time for a little while by making short excursions northward, and then, on the 16th of December, impatient of further delay, he started with Wills and two men for Carpentaria. The others were left, with verbal instructions, to wait three months for him. Thus, dispersed and neglected, he left the costly equipment containing within itself all the elements of successful geographical research. Certainly this was not the plan that had been anticipated by the promoters and organisers. We have now, at this stage, the spectacle of the main body loitering on the outskirts of the settled districts, four men killing time on the banks of Cooper's Creek, and the leader and three others scampering across the continent, all four of them utterly inexperienced in bushcraft.

As might have been expected the results of the journey are most barren: Wills's diary is sadly uninteresting, and Burke made only a few scanty notes, at the end of which he writes: "28th March. At the conclusion of report it would be as well to say that we reached the sea, but we could not obtain a view of the open ocean, although we made every endeavour to do so."

Shortly condensing Wills's diary, we gather the following account of their route. The first point they intended to reach was Eyre's Creek, but before arriving at it, they discovered a fine watercourse coming from the north, which took them a long distance in the direction they desired to follow. This watercourse, which McKinlay afterwards called the Mueller, began in time to lead their steps too much to the eastward, in which direction lay its source. They therefore quitted it and kept due north, following a tributary well-supplied with both grass and water. This tributary led them well on to the northern dividing range, which they crossed without difficulty, coming down on to the head of the Cloncurry River. By tracing that river down they reached the Flinders River, which they followed down to the mangroves and salt water. They were, however, considerably out in their longitude, for they thought that they were on the Albert, over one hundred miles to the westward.



Having sighted salt water, if not the open sea, they commenced the retreat. Gray and King were the two men who were with Burke and Wills; and for equipment they had started with six camels, one horse, and three months' provisions. Short rations and fatiguing marches now began to tell, and during the struggle back to the Depot, there seems to have been an absence of that kindly spirit of comradeship that has so often distinguished other exploring expeditions fallen on evil days.

Gray became ill, and took some extra flour to make a little gruel with. For this infringement of rules, Burke personally chastised him. A few days afterwards, Wills wrote in his diary that they had to halt and send back for Gray, who was "gammoning" that he could not walk. Nine days afterwards the unfortunate man died, an act which is not often successfully "gammoned."

But to bring the miserable story to an end, at last on the evening of the 21st of April, 1861, two months after they had reached the Gulf, they re-entered the depot camp at Cooper's Creek, where four men had been instructed to await their return, only to find it deserted and lifeless. Keenly disappointed, for though they knew they were behind the appointed time, they had still hoped that some one would have waited for them, they searched the locality for some sign or message from their friends, and on a tree saw the word DIG carved. Beneath this message of hope they were soon busy digging, and before long they unearthed a welcome store of provisions and a letter, which ran:—

Depot, Cooper's Creek, April 21, 1861.

The depot party of V.E.E.* leaves this camp to-day to return to the Darling. I intend to go South-East from Camp 60 to get on our old track at Bulloo. Two of my companions and myself are quite well; the third — Patton — has been unable to walk for the last eighteen days as his leg has been severely hurt when thrown by one of the horses. No person has been up here from the Darling. We have six camels and twelve horses in good working condition.

WILLIAM BRAHE.

*[Footnote] Victorian Exploration Expedition.

Unfortunately, this was so worded that when Burke found it the same night, it gave him the impression that the depot party were all, with one exception, fairly well; and that, with fresh animals just off a long rest they would travel long stages on their homeward march. As a matter of fact, on the evening of the day that Burke returned, they were camped but fourteen miles away. But this was only the first of a series of singular and fatal oversights — that almost seemed pre-ordained by mocking Fate.

Burke consulted his companions as to the feasibility of their overtaking Brahe, and they both agreed that, in their tired and enfeebled condition, it was hopeless to attempt it. Burke proposed that instead of returning up the creek along the old route to Menindie, they should follow the creek down to Mount Hopeless in South Australia, following the route taken by A.C. Gregory.* Wills objected to this, and so did King, but ultimately both gave in, thereby signing their death warrant; for if they had remained quietly at the depot, they would have been rescued.

*[Footnote.] See Chapter 18.

After resting for five days, and finding their strength much restored by the food, they started for Mount Hopeless, ill-omened name. Before they left, Burke placed in the cache a paper, stating that they had returned, and then carefully restored the ground to its former condition. The common and natural thought to mark a tree or to make some other unmistakable sign of their return, does not seem to have occurred to either of the leaders. It will be seen further on how this scarcely credible omission was a main factor in deciding their fate.

As they progressed slowly down the creek, one of the two camels became bogged, and had to be shot where it lay. The wanderers cut off what meat there was on the body, and stayed two or three days to dry it in the sun. The one camel had now to carry what they had, except the bundles that the men bore, each some twenty-five pounds in weight. They made but little progress; the creek split up into many channels that ran out into earthy plains; and at last, when their one beast of burden gave in, they had to acknowledge defeat, and commenced to return. After shooting the wretched camel and drying his flesh, the men tried to live like the blacks, on fish and nardoo, the seeds of a small plant of which the natives make flour. But the struggle for existence was very hard; they were not expert hunters, and the natives, who were at first friendly and shared their food with them, soon out-grew the novelty of their presence, began to find them an encumbrance, and constantly shifted camp to avoid the burden of their support.

On the 27th of May, Wills went forward alone to visit the depot and deposit there the journals and a note stating their condition. He reached there on the 30th and wrote in his diary that "No traces of anyone, except blacks have been here since we left."

But while they were absent down the creek, Brahe and Wright had visited the place, and finding no sign of their return, and the cache apparently untouched, had ridden away concluding that they had not yet come back. This was the note that Wills left:—

May 30th, 1861. We have been unable to leave the creek. Both camels are dead. Burke and King are down on the lower part of the creek. I am about to return to them, when we shall probably all come up here. We are trying to live the best way we can, like the blacks, but we find it hard work. Our clothes are going fast to pieces; send provisions and clothes as soon as possible.

The depot party having left contrary to instructions has put us into this fix. I have deposited some of my journals here for fear of accidents.

WILLIAM J. WILLS.

Having done this, and once more carefully concealed all traces of the cache having been disturbed, Wills rejoined his companions in misfortune. Some friendly natives fed him on his way back to them.

During the intercourse that of necessity they had with the natives along Cooper's Creek, they had noticed the extensive use made by them of the seeds of the nardoo plant; but for a long time they had been unable to find this plant, nor would the blacks show it to them. At last King accidentally found it, and by its aid they managed to prolong their lives. But the seeds had to be gathered, cleaned, pounded and cooked; and in comparison with all this labour the nourishment afforded by the cakes was very slight. An occasional crow or hawk was shot, and a little fish now and then begged from the natives. As they were sinking rapidly, it was at last decided that Burke and King should go up the creek and endeavour to find the main camp of the natives and obtain food from them. Wills, who was now so weak as to be unable to move, was left lying under some boughs, with an eight days' supply of nardoo and water, the others trusting that within that period they would have returned to him.

On the 26th of June the two men started, and poor Wills was left to meet death alone. By the entries in his diary, which he kept written up as long as his strength remained, he evidently retained consciousness almost to the last. So exhausted was he that death must have come to him as a merciful release from the pain of living. His last entries, although giving evidence of fading faculties, are almost cheerful. He jocularly alludes to himself as Micawber, waiting for something to turn up. But it is evident that he had given up hope, and was waiting for death's approach, calm and resigned, without fear, like a good and gallant man.

Burke and King did not advance far. On the second day Burke had to give in from sheer weakness; the next morning when his companion looked at him he saw by the breaking light that his leader was dead.

The last entries in Burke's pocket-book run thus:—

"I hope we shall be done justice to. We have fulfilled our task but have been aban——. We have not been followed up as we expected, and the depot party abandoned their post...King has behaved nobly. He has stayed with me to the last, and placed the pistol in my hand, leaving me lying on the surface as I wished."

Left to himself, King wandered about in search of the natives, and, not finding them, the lonely man returned to the spot where they had left Wills, and found that his troubles too were over. He covered up the corpse with a little sand, and then left once more in search of the natives. This time he found them, and, moved by his solitary condition, they helped him to live until rescued by Howitt's party on September 15th.



Meanwhile the absence of any news from Wright, in charge of the main body, was beginning to create a feeling of uneasiness in Melbourne. A light party had already been equipped under A.W. Howitt to follow up Burke's tracks, when suddenly despatches from the Darling arrived from Wright, telling of the non-arrival of the four men. Howitt's party was doubled, and he was immediately sent off to Cooper's Creek to commence a search for the missing men. He had not far to go. On the 13th of September he arrived at the fateful depot camp on Cooper's Creek, with Brahe. He immediately commenced to follow, or try to follow, Burke's outward track, but on Sunday the 15th, while still on Cooper's Creek, King was found by E.J. Welch, the second in command of the relief party. Welch's account of the finding of King is as follows:—

"After travelling about three miles, my attention was attracted by a number of niggers on the opposite bank of the creek, who shouted loudly as soon as they saw me, and vigorously waved and pointed down the creek. A feeling of something about to happen excited me somewhat, but I little expected what the sequel was to be. Moving cautiously on through the undergrowth which lined the banks of the creek, the blacks kept pace on the opposite side, their cries increasing in volume and intensity; when suddenly rounding a bend I was startled to see a large body of them gathered on a sandy neck in the bed of the creek, between two large waterholes. Immediately they saw me, they too commenced to howl and wave their weapons in the air. I at once pulled up, and considered the propriety of waiting the arrival of the party, for I felt far from satisfied with regard to their intentions. But here, for the first time, my favourite horse — a black cob known in the camp as Piggy, a Murray Downs bred stock-horse of good repute both for foot and temper — appeared to think that his work was cut out for him, and the time had arrived in which to do it. Pawing and snorting at the noise, he suddenly slewed round and headed down the steep bank, through the undergrowth, straight for the crowd as he had been wont to do after many a mob of weaners on his native plains. The blacks drew hurriedly back to the top of the opposite bank, shouting and gesticulating violently, and leaving one solitary figure apparently covered with some scarecrow rags and part of a hat prominently alone in the sand. Before I could pull up I had passed it, and as I passed it tottered, threw up its hands in the attitude of prayer and fell on the sand. The heavy sand helped me to conquer Piggy on the level, and when I turned back, the figure had partially risen.

"Hastily dismounting, I was soon beside it, excitedly asking: 'Who in the name of wonder are you?' He answered, 'I am King, sir.' For the moment I did not grasp the thought that the object of our search was attained, for King being only one of the undistinguished members of the party, his name was unfamiliar to me.

"'King,' I repeated. 'Yes,' he said; 'the last man of the exploring expedition.' 'What! Burke's?' 'Yes,' he said. 'Where is he — and Wills?' 'Dead, both dead, long ago,' and again he fell to the ground.

"Then I knew who stood before me. Jumping into the saddle and riding up the bank, I fired two or three revolver shots to attract the attention of the party, and on their coming up, sent the other black boy to cut Howitt's track and bring him back to camp. We then put up a tent to shelter the rescued man, and by degrees we got from him the sad story of the death of his leader. We got it at intervals only, between the long rests which his exhausted condition compelled him to take."

As soon as King had recovered enough strength to accompany the party, they went to the place where Wills had breathed his last; and found his body in the gunyah as King had described it. There it was buried. On the 21st Burke's body was found up the creek; he too was at first buried where he died. Howitt, after rewarding the blacks who had cared for King, started back for Melbourne by easy stages. On his arrival there he was sent back to disinter the remains of the dead; a task which he and Welch safely accomplished, bringing the bodies down by way of Adelaide.

Dr. Becker, Stone, Purcell, and Patton were the others whose lives were sacrificed on this expedition, so marked with disaster. These victims received no token of public recognition of their fate, although a public funeral was accorded to Burke and Wills, and a statue has been erected to their memory in Melbourne.



The foolish and unaccountable oversight of Burke and his companions in not marking a tree, or otherwise leaving some recognisable sign of their return at the depot, seems to have led Brahe astray completely. He states his side of the case as follows:—

"Mr. Burke's return being so soon after my departure caused the tracks of his camels to correspond in the character of age exactly with our own tracks. The remains of three separate fires led us to suppose that blacks had been camped there...The ground above the cache was so perfectly restored to the appearance it presented when I left it, that in the absence of any fresh sign or mark of any description to be seen near, it was impossible to suppose that it had been disturbed."

The story of the lost explorers created intense excitement throughout the other colonies. Queensland, as the colony wherein the explorers were supposed to have met with disaster, sent out two search parties. The Victoria, a steam sloop, was sent up to the mouth of the Albert River in the Gulf of Carpentaria, having on board William Landsborough, with George Bourne as second in command, and a small and efficient party; another Queensland expedition, under Fred Walker, left the furthest station in the Rockhampton district; and from South Australia John McKinlay started to traverse the continent on much the same line of route as that taken by the unhappy men.



CHAPTER 15. THE RELIEF EXPEDITIONS AND ATTEMPTS TOWARDS PERTH.

15.1. JOHN MCKINLAY.

John McKinlay was born at Sandbank, on the Clyde, in 1819. He first came to the colony of New South Wales in 1836, and joined his uncle, a prosperous grazier, under whose guidance he soon became a good bushman with an ardent love of bush life. He took up several runs near the South Australian border, and thenceforth became associated with that province.

In 1861 he was appointed leader of the South Australian relief party and started from Adelaide on October 26th. On arriving at Blanche Water, he heard a vague rumour from the blacks that white men and camels had been seen at a distant inland water; but put little faith in the story. He traversed Lake Torrens, and, striking north, crossed the lower end of Cooper's Creek at a point where the main watercourse is lost in a maze of channels. Here he learned definite and particular details respecting the rumoured white men, and thinking there might be some groundwork of truth in the report, he now pressed forward to the locality indicated. Having formed a depot camp, he went ahead with two white men and a native. Passing through a belt of country with numerous small shallow lakelets, they came to a watercourse whereon they found signs of a grave, and they picked up a battered pint-pot. Next morning, feeling sure that the ground had been disturbed with a spade, they opened what proved to be a grave, and in it found the body of a European, the skull marked, so McKinlay states, with two sabre cuts. He noted down the description of the body, the locality, and its surroundings; and in view of these particulars, it has been stated that the body was that of Gray, who died in the neighbourhood.*

*[Footnote.] See Chapter 14.

Considering the minute and circumstantial accounts that have from time to time been related by the blacks concerning Leichhardt, one is not astonished at the legends told to McKinlay. The native with him told him that the whites had been attacked in their camp, and that the whole of them had been murdered; the blacks having finished by eating the bodies of the other men, and burying the journals, saddles, and similar portions of the equipment beside a lake a short distance away. A further search revealed another grave — empty — and there were other and slighter indications that white men had visited the neighbourhood, so that McKinlay was led to place some credence in this story.

Next morning a tribe of blacks appeared; and although they immediately ran away on perceiving the party, one was captured who corroborated the statement made by the other native. Both of them bore marks on them like bullet and shot wounds. The second native said that there was a pistol concealed near a neighbouring lake. He was sent to fetch it; but returned the next morning at the head of a host of aboriginals, armed, painted, and evidently bent on mischief. The leader was obliged to order his men to fire upon them, and it was only after two or three volleys that they retired.