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CHAPTER XVIII.
1. Burke and Wills.—In the year 1860 a
merchant of Melbourne offered £1,000 for the furtherance of discovery in
Australia; the Royal Society of Victoria undertook to organise an expedition
for the purpose of crossing the continent, and collected subscriptions to the
amount of £3,400; the Victorian Government voted £6,000, and spent an
additional sum of £3,000 in bringing twenty-six camels from Arabia. Under an energetic committee of the Royal Society, the most complete arrangements were made. Robert O’Hara
Burke was chosen as leader; Landells was second in command, with special charge
of the camels, for which three Hindoo drivers were also provided; W. J. Wills,
an accomplished young astronomer, was sent to take charge of the costly
instruments and make all the scientific observations. There were two other
scientific men and eleven subordinates, with twenty-eight horses to assist in
transporting the baggage. On the 20th August, 1860, the long train of laden
camels and horses set out from the Royal Park of Melbourne, Burke heading the
procession on a little grey horse. The mayor made a short speech, wishing him
God-speed; the explorers shook hands with their friends, and, amid the ringing
cheers of thousands of spectators, the long and picturesque line moved forward.
Robert O’Hara Burke.
The journey, as far as the Murrumbidgee, lay through settled country,
and was without incident; but, on the banks of that river, quarrelling began
among the party, and Burke dismissed the foreman; Landells then resigned, and
Wills was promoted to be second in command. Burke committed a great error in
his choice of a man to take charge of the camels in place of Landells. On a
sheep station he met with a man named Wright, who made himself very agreeable;
the two were soon great friends, and Burke, whose generosity was unchecked by
any prudence, gave to this utterly unqualified person an important charge in
the expedition.
On leaving the Murrumbidgee they ascended the Darling, till they reached
Menindie—the place from which Sturt had set out sixteen years before. Here
Burke left Wright with half the expedition, intending himself to push on
rapidly, and to be followed up more leisurely by Wright.
Burke and Wills, with six men and half the camels and horses, set off
through a very miserable country—not altogether barren, but covered with a kind
of pea, which poisoned the horses. A rapid journey brought them to the banks of
Cooper’s Creek, where they found fine pastures and plenty of water. Here they
formed a depôt and lived for some time, waiting for Wright, who, however, did
not appear. The horses and camels, by this rest, improved greatly in condition,
and the party were in capital quarters. But Burke grew
tired of waiting, and, as he was now near the centre of Australia, he
determined to make a bold dash across to the Gulf of Carpentaria. He left one
of his men, called Brahe, and three assistants, with six camels and twelve
horses, giving them instructions to remain for three months; and if within that
time he did not return, they might consider him lost, and would then be at
liberty to return to Menindie. On the 16th December Burke and Wills, along with
two men, named King and Gray, started on their perilous journey, taking with
them six camels and one horse, which carried provisions to last for three
months.
William John Wills.
2. Rapid Journey to Gulf of Carpentaria.—They followed the broad current of Cooper’s Creek for some
distance, and then struck off to the north, till they reached a stream, which
they called Eyre Creek. From this they obtained abundant supplies of water,
and, therefore, kept along its banks till it turned to the eastward; then
abandoning it, they marched due north, keeping along the 140th meridian,
through forests of boxwood, alternating with plains well watered and richly
covered with grass. Six weeks after leaving Cooper’s Creek they came upon a
fine stream, flowing north, to which they gave the name “Cloncurry,” and, by
following its course, they found that it entered a large river, on whose banks
they were delighted to perceive the most luxuriant vegetation and frequent
clusters of palm trees. They felt certain that its waters flowed into the Gulf
of Carpentaria, and therefore, by keeping close to it, they had nothing to
fear. But they had brought only three months’ provisions with them; more than
half of that time had now elapsed, and they were still 150 miles from the sea.
Burke now lost no time, but hurried on so fast that, one after another, the
camels sank exhausted; and, when they had all succumbed, Burke and Wills took
their only horse to carry a small quantity of provisions, and, leaving Gray and
King behind, set out by themselves on foot. They had
to cross several patches of swampy ground; and the horse, becoming inextricably
bogged, was unable to go farther. But still Burke and Wills hurried on by
themselves till they reached a narrow inlet on the Gulf of Carpentaria, and
found that the river they had been following was the Flinders, whose mouth had
been discovered by Captain Stokes in 1842. They were very anxious to view the
open sea; but this would have required another couple of days, and their
provisions were already exhausted; they were, therefore, obliged to hasten back
as quickly as possible. The pangs of hunger overtook them before they could
reach the place where King and Gray had remained with the provisions. Burke
killed a snake, and ate a part of it, but he felt very ill immediately after;
and when, at length, they reached the provisions, he was not able to go forward so quickly as it was necessary to do, if they wished
to be safe. However, they recovered the horse and camels, which had been
greatly refreshed by their rest; and, by taking easy stages, they managed to
move south towards home. But their hurried journey to the north, in which they
had traversed, beneath a tropical sun, about 140 miles every week, had told
severely on their constitutions; Gray became ill, and it was now necessary to
be so careful with the provisions that he had little chance of regaining his
lost strength. One evening, after they had come to a halt, he was found sitting
behind a tree, eating a little mixture he had made for himself of flour and
water. Burke said he was stealing the provisions, fell upon him, and gave him a
severe thrashing. He seems after this never to have rallied; whilst the party
moved forward he was slowly sinking. Towards the end of March their provisions
began to fail; they killed a camel, dried its flesh, and then went forward. At
the beginning of April this was gone, and they killed their horse. Gray now lay
down, saying he could not go on; Burke said he was “shamming,” and left him.
However, the gentler counsel of Wills prevailed; they returned and brought him
forward. But he could only go a little farther; the poor fellow breathed his
last a day or two after, and was buried in the wilderness. Burke now regretted
his harshness, all the more as he himself was quickly sinking. All three,
indeed, were utterly worn out; they were thin and haggard, and so weak that
they tottered rather than walked along. The last few miles were very, very
weary; but, at last, on the 21st of April, they came in sight of the depôt,
four months and a half after leaving it. Great was their alarm on seeing no
sign of people about the place; and, as they staggered forward to the spot at
sunset, their hearts sank within them when they saw a notice, stating that
Brahe had left that very morning. He would be then only seven hours’ march
away. The three men looked at one another in blank dismay; but they were so
worn out that they could not possibly move forward with any hope of overtaking
the fresh camels of Brahe’s party. On looking round, however, they saw the word
“dig” cut on a neighbouring tree; and, when they turned up the soil, they found
a small supply of provisions.
Brahe had remained a month and a half longer than he had been told to
wait; and as his own provisions were fast diminishing, and there seemed, as
yet, to be no signs of Wright with the remainder of the expedition, he thought
it unsafe to delay his return any longer. This man Wright was the cause of all
the disasters that ensued. Instead of following closely on Burke, he had
loitered at Menindie for no less than three months and one week, amusing
himself with his friends; and, when he did set out, he took things so leisurely
that Brahe was half-way back to the Darling before they met.
3. Sufferings.—On the evening when they entered the depôt, Burke, Wills, and King made a hearty
supper; then, for a couple of days, they stretched their stiff and weary limbs
at rest. But inaction was dangerous, for, even with the greatest expedition,
their provisions would only serve to take them safely to the Darling. They now
began to deliberate as to their future course. Burke wished to go to Adelaide,
because, at Mount Hopeless—where Eyre had been forced to turn back in
1840—there was now a large sheep station, and he thought it could not be more
than 150 miles away. Wills was strongly averse to this proposal. “It is true,”
he said, “Menindie is 350 miles away, but then we know the road, and are sure
of water all the way.” But Burke was not to be persuaded, and they set out for
Mount Hopeless. Following Cooper’s Creek for many miles, they entered a region
of frightful barrenness. Here, as one of the camels became too weak to go farther,
they were forced to kill it and to dry its flesh. Still they followed the
creek, till at last it spread itself into marshy thickets and was lost; they
then made a halt, and found they had scarcely any provisions left, while their
clothes were rotten and falling to pieces. Their only chance was to reach Mount
Hopeless speedily; they shot their last camel, and, whilst Burke and King were
drying its flesh, Wills struck out to find Mount Hopeless; but no one knew
which way to look for it, and Wills, after laboriously traversing the dry and
barren wastes in all directions, came back unsuccessful. A short rest was
taken, and then the whole party turned southward, determined this time to reach
the mount. But they were too weak to travel fast; day after day over these
dreary plains, and still no sign of a hill; till at length, when they were
within fifty miles of Mount Hopeless, they gave in. Had they only gone but a
little farther, they would have seen the summit of the mountain rising upon the
horizon; but just at this point they lost hope and turned to go back. After a
weary journey, they once more reached the fresh water and the grassy banks of
Cooper’s Creek, but now with provisions for only a day or two. They sat down to
consider their position, and Burke said he had heard that the natives of
Cooper’s Creek lived chiefly on the seed of a plant which they called nardoo;
so that, if they could only find a native tribe, they might, perhaps, learn to
find sufficient subsistence from the soil around them. Accordingly, Burke and
King set out to seek a native encampment; and, having found one, they were
kindly received by the blacks, who very willingly showed them how to gather the
little black seeds from a kind of grass which grows close to the ground.
With this information they returned to Wills; and, as the nardoo seed
was abundant, they began at once to gather it; but they found that, through
want of skill, they could scarcely obtain enough for two meals a day by working
from morning till night; and, when evening came, they had to clean, roast, and
grind it; and, besides this, whatever it might have been to the blacks, to them
it was by no means nutritious—it made them sick, and gave them no strength.
Whilst they were thus dwelling on the lower part of Cooper’s Creek,
several miles away from the depôt, Brahe had returned to find them and bring
them relief. On his way home he had met with Wright leisurely coming up, and
had hastened back with him to the depôt; but when they reached it they saw no
signs of Burke and Wills, although the unfortunate explorers had been there
only a few days before. Brahe, therefore, concluded that they were dead, and once more set out for home. Meanwhile Burke
thought it possible that a relief party might in this way have reached the
creek, and Wills volunteered to go to the depôt to see if any one was there. He
set out by himself, and after journeying three or four days reached the place;
but only to find it still and deserted. He examined it carefully, but could see
no trace of its having been recently visited; there could be no advantage in
remaining, and he turned back to share the doom of his companions. He now began
to endure fearful pangs from hunger. One evening he entered an encampment that
had just been abandoned by the natives, and around the fire there were some
fish bones, which he greedily picked. Next day he saw two small fish floating
dead upon a pool, and they made a delicious feast; but, in spite of these stray
morsels, he was rapidly sinking from hunger, when suddenly he was met by a
native tribe. The black men were exceedingly kind; one carried his bundle for
him, another supported his feeble frame, and gently they led the gaunt and
emaciated white man to their camp. They made him sit down and gave him a little
food. Whilst he was eating he saw a great quantity of fish on the fire. For a
few minutes he wondered if all these could possibly be for him, till at length
they were cooked and the plentiful repast was placed before him. The natives
then gathered round and clapped their hands with delight when they saw him eat
heartily. He stayed with them for four days, and then set out to bring his
friends to enjoy likewise this simple hospitality. It took him some days to
reach the place where he had left them; but when they heard his good news they
lost no time in seeking their native benefactors. Yet, on account of their
weakness, they travelled very slowly, and when they reached the encampment it
was deserted. They had no idea whither the natives had gone. They struggled a
short distance farther; their feebleness overcame them, and they were forced to
sink down in despair. All day they toiled hard to prepare nardoo seed; but
their small strength could not provide enough to support them. Once or twice
they shot a crow, but such slight repasts served only to prolong their
sufferings. Wills, throughout all his journeyings, had kept a diary, but now
the entries became very short; in the struggle for life there was no time for
such duties, and the grim fight with starvation required all their strength.
At this time Wills records that he cannot
understand why his legs are so weak; he has bathed them in the stream, but
finds them no better, and he can hardly crawl out of the hut. His next entry is, that unless relief comes shortly he cannot last more
than a fortnight. After this his mind seems to have begun to wander; he makes
frequent and unusual blunders in his diary. The last words he wrote were that
he was waiting, like Mr. Micawber, for something to turn up, and that, though
starving on nardoo seed was by no means unpleasant, yet he would prefer to have
a little fat and sugar mixed with it.
4. Death of Burke and Wills.—Burke
now thought that their only chance was to find the blacks, and proposed that he
and King should set out for that purpose. They were very loath to leave Wills,
but, under the circumstances, no other course was possible. They laid him
softly within the hut, and placed at his head enough of nardoo to last him for
eight days. Wills asked Burke to take his watch, and a letter he had written
for his father; the two men pressed his hands, smoothed his couch tenderly for
the last time, and set out. There, in the utter silence of the wilderness, the
dying man lay for a day or two: no ear heard his last sigh, but his end was as
gentle as his life had been free from reproach.
Burke and King walked out on their desperate errand. On the first day
they traversed a fair distance; but, on the second, they had not proceeded two
miles when Burke lay down, saying he could go no farther. King entreated him to
make another effort, and so he dragged himself to a little clump of bushes,
where he stretched his limbs very wearily. An hour or two afterwards he was
stiff and unable to move. He asked King to take his watch and pocket-book, and,
if possible, to give them to his friends in Melbourne; then he begged of him
not to depart till he was quite dead: he knew he should not live long, and he
should like some one to be near him to the last. He spoke with difficulty, but
directed King not to bury him, but to let him lie above the ground, with a
pistol in his right hand. They passed a weary and lonesome night; and in the
morning, at eight o’clock, Burke’s restless life was ended. King wandered for
some time forlorn, but, by good fortune, he stumbled upon an abandoned
encampment, where, by neglect, the blacks had left a bag of nardoo, sufficient
to last him a fortnight; and, with this, he hastened back to the hut where
Wills had been laid. All he could do now, however, was to dig a grave for his body
in the sand, and, having performed that last sad duty, he set out once more on
his search, and found a tribe, differing from that which he had already seen.
They were very kind, but not anxious to keep him, until, having shot some birds
and cured their chief of a malady, he was found to be of some use, and soon
became a great favourite with them. They made a trip to the body of Burke, but,
respecting his last wishes, they did not seek to bury it, and merely covered it
gently with a layer of leafy boughs.
5. Relief Parties.—When Wright and Brahe
returned to Victoria with the news that, though it was more than five months
since Burke and Wills had left Cooper’s Creek, there were no signs of them at
the depôt, all the colonies showed their solicitude by organising parties to go
to the relief of the explorers, if, perchance, they should be still alive.
Victoria was the first in the field, and the Royal Society equipped a small
party, under Mr. A. W. Howitt, to examine the banks of Cooper’s Creek.
Queensland offered five hundred pounds to assist in the search, and with this
sum, an expedition was sent to examine the Gulf of Carpentaria. Landsborough,
its leader, was conveyed in the Victoria steamer to the gulf, and followed the
Albert almost to its source, in hopes that Burke and Wills might be dwelling
with the natives on that stream. Walker was sent to cross from Rockhampton to
the Gulf of Carpentaria; he succeeded in reaching the Flinders River, where
Burke and Wills had been; but, of course, he saw nothing of them. MʻKinlay was sent by South
Australia to advance in the direction of Lake Torrens and reach Cooper’s Creek. These
various expeditions were all eager in prosecuting the search, but it was to Mr.
Howitt’s
party that success fell. In following the course of Cooper’s Creek downward
from the depôt he saw the tracks of camels, and by these he was led to the
district in which Burke and Wills had died.
Several natives, whom he met, brought him to the place where, beneath a
native hut, King was sitting, pale, haggard, and wasted to a shadow. He was so
weak that it was with difficulty Howitt could catch the feeble whispers that
fell from his lips; but a day or two of European food served slightly to
restore his strength. Howitt then proceeded to the spot where the body of Wills
was lying partly buried, and, after reading over it a short service, he
interred it decently. Then he sought the thicket where the bones of Burke lay
with the rusted pistol beside them, and, having wrapped a union jack around
them, he dug a grave for them hard by.
Three days later the blacks were summoned, and their eyes brightened at
the sight of knives, tomahawks, necklaces, looking-glasses, and so forth, which
were bestowed upon them in return for their kindness to King. Gay pieces of
ribbon were fastened round the black heads of the children, and the whole tribe
moved away rejoicing in the possession of fifty pounds of sugar, which had been
divided among them.
When Howitt and King returned, and the sad story of the expedition was
related, the Victorian Government sent a party to bring the remains of Burke
and Wills to Melbourne, where they received the melancholy honours of a public
funeral amid the general mourning of the whole colony. In after years, a statue
was raised to perpetuate their heroism and testify to the esteem with which the
nation regarded their memory.
6. MʻDouall Stuart.—Burke and Wills
were the first who ever crossed the Australian Continent; but, for several
years before they set out, another traveller had, with wonderful perseverance,
repeatedly attempted this feat. John MʻDouall Stuart had served as draughtsman in Sturt’s expedition to
the Stony Desert, and he had been well trained in that school of adversity and
sufferings. He was employed, in 1859, by a number of squatters, who wished him
to explore for them new lands in South Australia, and having found a passage
between Lake Eyre and Lake Torrens, he discovered, beyond the deserts which had
so much disheartened Eyre, a broad district of fine pastoral land.
Next year the South Australian Government offered £2,000 as a reward to
the first person who should succeed in crossing Australia from south to north;
and Stuart set out from Adelaide to attempt the exploit. With only two men he
travelled to the north, towards Van Diemen’s Gulf, and penetrated much farther
than Sturt had done in 1844. Indeed, he was only 400 miles from the other side
of Australia, when the hostility of the blacks forced him to return: he
succeeded, however, in planting a flag in the centre of the continent, at a
place called by him Central Mount Stuart. Next year he was again in the field, and following exactly the same course, approached
very near to Van Diemen’s Gulf; being no more than 250 miles distant from its
shores, when want of provisions forced him once more to return. The report of
this expedition was sent to Burke and Wills, just before they set out from
Cooper’s Creek on their fatal trip to the Gulf of Carpentaria.
It was not until the following year, 1862, that Stuart succeeded in his purpose. He had the perseverance to start a third time,
and follow his former route; and on this occasion he was successful in reaching
Van Diemen’s Gulf, and returned safely, after having endured many sufferings
and hardships.
His triumphal entry into Adelaide took place on the very day when
Howitt’s mournful party entered that city, bearing the remains of Burke and
Wills, on their way to Melbourne. Stuart then learnt that these brave explorers
had anticipated him in crossing the continent, for they had reached the Gulf of
Carpentaria in February, 1861; whilst he did not arrive at Van Diemen’s Gulf
until July, 1862. However, Stuart had shown so great a courage, and had been
twice before so near the completion of his task, that every one was pleased
when the South Australian Government gave him the well-merited reward.
7. Warburton.—In a subsequent
chapter it will be told how a line of telegraph was, in 1872, constructed along
the track followed by Stuart; and as the stations connected with this line are
numerous, it is now an easy matter to cross the continent from south to north.
But in recent years a desire has arisen among the adventurous to journey
overland from east to west. Warburton, in 1873, made a successful trip of this
kind. With his son, two men, and two Afghans to act as drivers of his seventeen
camels, he started from Alice Springs, a station on the telegraph line close to
the tropic of Capricorn.
The country immediately round Alice Springs was very beautiful, but a
journey of only a few days served to bring the expedition into a dry and barren
plain, so desolate that Warburton declared it could never be traversed without
the assistance of camels. After travelling about four hundred miles, he reached
those formidable ridges of fiery red sand in which the waters of Sturt’s Creek
are lost, and where A. C. Gregory was in 1856 compelled to turn back. In
traversing this district, the party suffered many hardships; only two out of
seventeen camels survived, and the men were themselves frequently on the verge
of destruction. It was only by exercising the greatest care and prudence that
Warburton succeeded in bringing his party to the Oakover River, on the
north-west coast, and when he arrived once more in Adelaide it was found that
he had completely lost the sight of one eye.
8. Giles and Forrest.—Towards the close of the
same year, 1873, a young Victorian named Giles started on a similar trip,
intending to cross from the middle of the telegraph line to West Australia. He
held his course courageously to the west, but the country was of such appalling
barrenness that, after penetrating half-way to the western coast, he was forced
to abandon the attempt and return. But when three years afterwards he renewed
his efforts, he succeeded, after suffering much and making long marches without
water. He had more than one encounter with the natives, but he had the
satisfaction of crossing from the telegraph line to the West Australian coast,
through country never before traversed by the foot of civilised man. In 1874
this region was successfully crossed by Forrest, a Government surveyor of West
Australia, who started from Geraldton, to the south of Shark Bay, and, after a
journey of twelve hundred miles almost due east, succeeded in reaching the
telegraph line. His entry into Adelaide was like a triumphal march, so great
were the crowds that went out to escort him to the city. Forrest was then a
young man, but a most skilful and sagacious traveller. Lightly equipped, and
accompanied by only one or two companions, he has on several occasions
performed long journeys through the most formidable country with a celerity and
success that are indeed surprising.
His brother, Alexander Forrest, and a long list of bold and skilful bushmen, have succeeded in traversing the continent in every
direction. It is not all desert. They have found fine
tracts of land in the course of their journeys. Indeed, more than half of the
recently explored regions are suitable for sheep and cattle, but there are
other great districts which are miserable and forbidding. However, thanks to
the heroic men whose names have been mentioned, and to such others as the
Jardine Brothers, Ernest Favenc, Gosse, and the Baron von Mueller, almost the
whole of Australia is now explored. Only a small part of South Australia and the
central part of West Australia remain unknown. We all of us owe a great debt of
gratitude to the men who endured so much to make known to the world the
capabilities of our continent.
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