At last, on Sunday, the 21st April, they arrived, faint and exhausted, at the very spot where they had established the depôt and parted company with Brahe.

The place was deserted!

Eagerly but silently the two men looked round for any trace of their party, and when the appalling truth at last broke fully upon them Burke flung himself on the ground, completely overwhelmed, while Wills, paralysed and bewildered, showed no sign of anger or loss of self-command. In a few moments all three men sufficiently recovered themselves to investigate the position, and upon a tree they found marked "D I G, 21 April, 1861." The pang of intense disappointment which shot through their hearts as they read from the date on the tree that they had been deserted on that very day, the day of their return, can hardly be conceived. Still there was a ray of hope; they might not have proceeded far on their journey, and weak and exhausted as they were, strength might be left to overtake them. Eagerly they broke open the cache, or hiding-place, and found there the following letter :—

"Depôt, Cooper's Creek, April 21, 1861.

"The depôt party of the V. E. E. leaves this camp to-day to return to the Darling. I intend to go S.E. from Camp 60 to get into our old track near Bulloo. Two of my companions and myself are quite well; the third, Paton, 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 one has been up here from the Darling.

"We have six camels and twelve horses in good working condition.

"WILLIAM BRAHE."

The concluding words of this letter crushed out the last ray of hope. How could those weary men overtake their companions, who were "quite well," and were on their way homeward, with camels and horses "in good working condition"?

They found a small supply of flour, oatmeal, sugar, and rice, and made themselves a supper forthwith, and discussed the future. Wills was anxious to proceed as soon as possible in the old track homewards, but Burke, feeling satisfied that the provisions left for them would not hold out if they continued in that direction, and that they might more speedily find succour by trying to make for Mount Hopeless, determined upon that course. It was a fatal determination, as they discovered when it was too late.

Lingering at Cooper's Creek for a few days to recruit, they then placed an urgent letter in the cache, and, depositing their everything that was not absolutely necessary to support life, they turned their faces towards Mount Hopeless. They had not travelled for many days before they discovered that the water-courses were dry, and in their present state to have advanced without water would have been to have courted death.

There was no course left to them, therefore, but to return a distance of some forty miles to a creek where water was abundant, but by that time their rations were so much reduced as to consist of one small cake and three sticks of dried meat per diem. Then Wills went back to deposit a further note in the cache, stating that they were living on the creek.

EXTRACTS FROM WILLS'S DIARY.

135

While at this creek they fell in with natives, and by signs conveyed to them a knowledge of their need. The natives showed them great hospitality and friendliness, and made them a present of some fish. Finally, as their provisions dwindled away and their strength grew daily less and less, they cast in their lot with the natives, spending all their time in gathering nardoo, a plant from whose seeds the natives made a kind of porridge.

However well it might suit the natives, it was insufficient for Europeans; and we find in Wills's diary, which he faithfully kept posted until the end, frequent entries like the following::

Monday, 10th June.—Mr. Burke and King collecting nardoo; self at home, too weak to go out.

"Saturday, 15th June.-King out for nardoo. Mr. Burke and I pounding and cleaning it; he finds himself getting very weak, and I am not a bit stronger. I have determined to chew tobacco and eat less nardoo, in hopes that it may induce some change in the system."

In the meantime the natives had departed, and the three men were left in their mia-mia entirely to their own resources. King retained his strength better than the others, and worked with surprising energy in collecting nardoo, which, after the 16th of June, when the last piece of dried camel was eaten, constituted the sole diet. "I cannot understand this nardoo at all," writes Wills in his journal; "it certainly will not agree with me in any form. We are now reduced to it alone, and we manage to consume from four to five pounds per day between us; it appears to be quite indigestible, and cannot possibly be sufficiently nutritious to sustain life by itself."

In addition to the lack of food, there came the disaster of almost unprecedentedly cold weather, and their clothing consisted simply of a few rags held slightly together, and no extra clothing whatever to afford them protection from the bitterness of the cold night air.

It is as surprising as interesting to know how calmly these brave men, despite the bitter disappointment and mortification, looked forward to the inevitable death awaiting them.

"Unless relief comes in some form or another," wrote Wills, "I cannot possibly last more than a fortnight."

But even then he had over-estimated his strength. On the 27th of June, feeling that his end was drawing nigh, he wrote the following letter to his father :

:

"Cooper's Creek, 27th June, 1861.

"MY DEAR FATHER,-These are probably the last lines you will ever get from me. We are on the point of starvation, not so much from absolute want of food, but from the want of nutriment in what we can get.

"Our position, although more provoking, is probably not near so disagreeable as that of poor Harry and his companions. We have had very good luck, and made a most

*

* Harry, his cousin, Lieutenant Le Viscompte, who perished with Sir John Franklin.

START OF THE BURKE AND WILLS EXPEDITION.

129

(a Sepoy), and two natives, Belooch and Botan, assistants. Cooper's Creek was selected as the base of operations, where a large depôt of provisions was to be established to fall back upon in case of need.

ROBERT O'HARA BURKE.* (Drawn by William Strutt, Painter of the original Portrait.)

It was a gay day in Melbourne when, on the 20th of August, 1860, bells rang, guns fired, banners waved, and lusty voices cheered, as the expedition set forth from the Royal Park, well provided with pack-horses, stores, instruments, waggons, and an imposing

In the background are shown the Royal Park and camel stables.

string of twenty-seven camels. All went well at first; the season was good, the roads in fair condition, and the spirits of all the party were high. But this state of affairs did not last long. Ferguson, the foreman, grew insubordinate, and had to be discharged ; then Landells, who had charge of the camels, followed suit, and left the expedition in high dudgeon. Dr. Beckler grew faint-hearted and went away, and then came about a re-organisation of the party. Wills was appointed second in command, and, as the sequel will show, was in every way worthy of the distinction; but, unhappily, a man named Wright, an old settler, but one of whose qualifications nothing previously was known, was selected by Burke to occupy the position of third in command, and to conduct them to Cooper's Creek, 400 miles farther on. To this man are mainly attributable the whole of the disasters of the expedition, while to Wills remains an imperishable memory for his heroic zeal as joint explorer with Burke of the terra incognita between Cooper's Creek and Carpentaria.

William John Wills was no ordinary man. As a child, in his home in Devonshire, he showed proclivities for learning, and an intelligence altogether beyond his years. He was daring without being reckless; and it is recorded by his father that nothing moved him to anger so readily as witnessing any ill-treatment of dumb animals. He was destined to the medical profession, and studied at St. Bartholomew's; but his father proposing to emigrate to Australia when he was in his nineteenth year, young Wills determined to accompany him.

Circumstances prevented the father from carrying out his intentions, but the young man started, endured the hardships of a steerage passage, entered upon the work of a shepherd at £30 per annum, and bore the vicissitudes of colonial experience; but his scientific tastes prevailed, he studied surveying as a means of livelihood and astronomy as a means of recreation, and ultimately obtained a good appointment in the Magnetic Observatory at Melbourne under Professor Neumayer, a position he held with credit to himself, and only relinquished to join what was then called Burke's Expedition.

The news of his intention to join that expedition was very painful to some of his friends, and especially to his mother, who frequently urged him to re-consider his determination, pleading the danger of the enterprise. An insight into the character of the man is given in a letter he wrote to her at that time. "The actual danger is nothing, and the positive advantages very great. Besides, my dear mother, what avails your faith if you terrify yourself about such trifles? Were we born, think you, to be locked up in comfortable rooms, and never to incur the hazard of a mishap? If things were at the worst, I trust I could meet death with as much resignation as others, even if it came to-night. I am often disgusted at hearing young people I know declare that they are afraid of doing this or that because they might be killed. Were I in some of their shoes, I should be glad to hail the chance of departing this life fairly in the execution of an honourable duty."

After the re-organisation of the party, Burke, with Wills and a selected number, set forward to test the safety of the road to Cooper's Creek, which had been pronounced by the settlers at Menindie, where he established his first depôt, to be dangerous. Wright conducted them for a hundred miles on the road, and then returned to Menindie, to bring up the stores and other things which had been left in charge of Dr. Becker, who,