Atlas Page 57
By W. H. Traill

INTERIOR EXPANSION.

MEANWHILE, the Messrs. Russell explored the Wide Bay country, including the Bunya Bunya tract —so called from the native name for an edible seed of a lofty pine-like tree —and had penetrated, by the forest ridges which border the headwaters of what is now known as the Burnett River, to their own runs on the Darling Downs.

By this time much progress had been made in the older settlements. A new and much more convenient access to the northern downs than that afforded by Cunningham’s pass had been discovered in the main range, and a stockman in the employment of Mr. Stuart Russell —Horton by name —built a public-house where the new pass debouched on the downs. His house was the nucleus of the little town of Drayton, now falling into insignificance owing to the greater convenience of its neighbour, Toowoomba. The natives proved exceedingly hostile and bold along the course of the new track, which at this point led from Limestone (Ipswich) to the mountains. Near where at Helidon railway station the trains now arrest their journey that travellers may dine in the refreshment- rooms, the attendants and drivers of a caravan of bullock-drays were assailed by so formidable and audacious an array of natives that they fled for their lives. Their drays were looted by the triumphant blacks, and what of their contents were not consumed were destroyed. This exploit, however, provoked vigorous reprisals. The squatters assembled in force with all the hands they could muster, and executed an organised foray upon the plunderers. They found the tracks of their foes, fell upon them, and drove them to seek refuge on the boulder-strewed slopes of a peculiar table-topped mountain, to which Cunningham had in his last exploration given the name of Hay’s Peak, which was stormed. A number of the aborigines perished, but the spirit of the survivors was untamed. It was not until a detachment of soldiers had been permanently quartered at the foot of the main range that the road became safe.

The excursions of the Russells to the northward of the Darling Downs were followed in 1847 by official explorations. In March Mr. Burnett, a government surveyor, crossed the watershed, and attempted to follow down the stream which, it was surmised, must be either the Boyne or the Wide Bay River. Excessive rains impeded his progress, and he had not nearly reached the sea when he was compelled to turn back, satisfied, however, that the river he had been tracing, and which he had left, swollen by floods to a height of sixty feet above its ordinary level, was the Boyne of Oxley. Incidentally, his report tells that at that time there was no station farther north than twenty-six degrees, which may be roughly described as a line passing east and west through the Double Island Point, the south headland of Wide Bay. Later, in the same year, Burnett supplemented his land exploration by an expedition in a boat. He entered the Boyne from Port Curtis, and succeeded in establishing a connection with a point reached in his land journey. This accomplished, he repeated the ascent of the Wide Bay River —a feat previously effected by Petrie and Russell, and corroborated the testimony of the former that a fine site for a township existed about forty miles up the river. The upper course of the Boyne was officially declared to be the Burnett, which, however, was in fact not the case, and the Wide Bay River was correctly identified as the Mary.

In the track of such exploration, the settlements were constantly expanding; but, just as the prospects of the liberated territory seemed brightest, a check was experienced. The serious monetary crisis which afflicted New South Wales was keenly felt at its northernmost outpost. Amidst these anxieties, the residents scarcely appreciated the importance of another change which had taken place in their political, status. On the first of January, 1843, the Imperial Act conferring upon Australia its earliest indulgence in quasi-representative institutions was received in Sydney by Sir George Gipps, and, in accordance with the arrangements immediately made, the inhabitants of Moreton Bay and the Darling Downs were called upon to take part, with the Macquarie and Upper Hunter, in the election of one of the thirty-six representative members, who, with eighteen nominated by the Crown, constituted the first legislative council in Sydney. Mr. Alexander Macleay was chosen, if choice can be alleged at all. It is perhaps not surprising that no exuberance of joy swelled the bosoms of the residents of Moreton Bay on being endowed with the privilege of sharing with three other districts the selection of one among fifty-four councillors.

DR. LUDWIG LEICHHARDT.

IN the year 1824 the British Government had established a post on Port Essington, at the northwestern extremity of the Australian continent. It was considered desirable to discover a practicable route by land which should connect that remote establishment with the populated southeastern settlements. The project was discussed in the newly-formed legislative council of New South Wales in December, 1843, and a grant of one thousand pounds for the expedition was recommended to the governor; Fort Bourke, on the Darling River, the farthest defined point to the north-west of Sydney, being indicated as a suitable point of departure. But Sir George Gipps hesitated. He doubted the feasibleness of the direct route suggested, and, apparently to gain time, referred the whole question to the Colonial Office. Sir Thomas Mitchell, the then surveyor-general, and an explorer of proved competence, had been intended to take the leadership of the exploring expedition. Among those who had hoped to be included in the party was Dr. Ludwig Leichhardt, a native of Prussia, educated as a physician, partly in Paris. Dr. Leichhardt was an enthusiast for exploration and a skilled botanist, in which latter capacity he had expected to be accepted by Mitchell, to whom he had brought a letter of introduction from Professor Owen. He had already made an overland journey to Moreton Bay, and had even penetrated thence northward to Wide Bay. With characteristic resolution, Leichhardt converted what to most men would have been a crushing discouragement into a favourable opportunity. He determined to organise an expedition of his own, and appealed for assistance to the public of New South Wales. The response was not generous, but Leichhardt made it suffice. He seems to have shared the, doubts of the governor as to the suitableness of Fort Bourke as a point of departure, and, as his subsequent course appears to indicate, also as to the practicableness of the direct route through the interior, on which a gloomy colour had been thrown by the latest exploration of Sturt. He sailed from Sydney for Moreton Bay in August, 1844, in the steamer "Sovereign," which had been put on this line to accommodate the already developing trade with the liberated settlement. But, before starting, he addressed to Professor Owen in England a valedictory letter, in which he wrote: "When you next hear of me, it will be that I am lost and dead, or that I have succeeded to penetrate through the interior to Port Essington." After some deliberation whether he should strike in the outset northward along the seaward slopes of the main range —a course which probably had attractions for him as carrying him through the Wide Bay country with which he was acquainted, he decided upon clearing the range as a preliminary. He passed to Jimbour —then known as Jimba-the most westerly station on the Darling Downs, then the frontier settlement, receiving from the squatters on his route sundry gifts of horned cattle, and, after completing his preparations, he plunged into the wilderness.

Leichhardt’s companions were, at this stage, Mr. Pemberton Hodgson, squatter, Mr. Gilbert, a naturalist, and Caleb, an American Negro, all of whom had volunteered at Brisbane. From Sydney he brought two young men, Calvert and Roper, a lad of sixteen name Murphy Brown, an aboriginal, and Philips, a convict. On the Downs, Mr. Rolleston lent him another native, Charlie. For these ten individuals he had but seventeen horses, but he had also sixteen bullocks which he utilised as beasts of burden to carry packs of stores. These consisted of twelve hundred pounds of flour, two hundred pounds of sugar, eighty pounds Of tea, twenty pounds of gelatine, thirty pounds of powder, and a corresponding supply of shot. Each of the party carried a spare suit of clothing and a poncho of oiled calico. This was a meagre equipment for such an enterprise as Leichhardt contemplated, and contrasts marvellously with such as Mitchell, with the public purse and government establishments to draw upon, was accustomed to provide. We shall presently see the latter explorer marching forth to subdue the wilderness with a little army of men and beasts, and carrying in his train an equipage of specially constructed carts, and even boats.

Leichhardt, enthusiast as he was, had not proceeded far when he became conscious that it would not do. He found game scarce, whereas he had reckoned on it as a plentiful source of food supply. By the time he had reached the upper course of what is now known as the Dawson River, he perceived that the number of mouths must be reduced. Accordingly, after rendering assistance in a successful experiment in "jerking" or drying the flesh of a bullock, Mr. Hodgson and Caleb the negro, were detached and returned to the settlement, bearing with them the last tidings of Leichhardt and his followers which reached the expectant population of the colony for nearly a year and a half.

After six months had gone by, and still month after month elapsed, bringing no tidings of the adventurers, uneasiness deepened into apprehension. When Leichhardt had been gone for a whole year the greatest alarm was felt. Sturt had at the same time been likewise long unheard of. Mr. Eyre, burning with a desire, subsequently fully realised, to stamp his name upon the face of the continent, made an offer in November, 1845, to start in search of either or both of the missing explorers. At that date, happily, Leichhardt was approaching the end of his long and weary journey, and was struggling round the southwesterly bight of the Gulf of Carpentaria.

On the Dawson River, the explorer had been pestered by swarms of hornets. The pastoral pioneers, who at a later period pushed out to reap the benefit of his discoveries, may have adopted a nomenclature originated by members of his party. Hornet Bank is still an existing station, and although the insect plague no longer annoys, its name acquired an additional appropriateness, now historical, from the tragic effects of the attacks of swarms of a still more formidable kind. The massacre by the natives in 1858 of eleven men, women, and children at Hornet Bank is one of the most melancholy catastrophes of Queensland pioneering.

To the explorer, every stage of his journey is fraught with some sort of interest. Though his path were to-day on the dreary levels of monotonous flats, where the wearisome repetition of the chalky boles of box-tree forest opened unchanging vistas, and their foliage shut in the upper view, every mile of progress had the interest of expectation. Every trifling change in the levels-the intrusion of an occasional gum or bloodwood tree, an alteration in the soil, or an outcrop of rock, engaged attention, and was hailed as the precursor of a different scene. In more rugged or in more open, country there was no lack of interest. The ever-varying landscape, the peaks, which successively came in view, all had the attraction of novelty and the romantic interest of illimitable possibilities. In these latter days it requires an exertion of the imagination to conceive the exaltation of spirit and the tension of nerves which must have stimulated and sustained the early explorers. Before them extended a territory vast enough to hide within its bosom races, and even nations, of whom the outer world had never heard. There was ample space and marge enough for Nature to have used as her playground in which to exhibit her wildest freaks. In that region, of which nothing was ascertained, nothing was impossible. When the little party plunged into the stony jaws of a rocky ravine, or entered the gloomy avenues of a tangled scrub, there was not merely the sensation of speculation as to whither the gorge would lead, or when extrication would be possible from the brush; their senses were not simply on the alert, because every denser clump and every jutting rock might conceal a hostile savage apprehension was balanced by anticipation. The next stage might entangle them among a labyrinth of precipices or lead them to a waterless region where a miserable and useless death awaited them. But, on the other hand, the emergence from a ravine or thicket might bring them in view of marvels hitherto unmatched; they might discover at their feet, in stupendous gorges, an Australian Mississippi or Amazon flowing in majesty; the horizon might delight their eyes with the snowy summits of mountains which should dwarf the Himalayas; an inland sea might glimmer at their feet, and mock the range of vision with its illimitable distances. Did their path descend, it might lead them to the diamond valley of Sinbad; did it trend upward, it might lead to a crest whence they should look down upon fields and cities populated by the lost tribes of Israel; did a distant line of foliage indicate a watercourse, it might be the storied Pactolus, its waters flowing over glittering sands of gold.

It is, however, probable that Leichhardt was cognisant of the story told by Clark, the "Barber," a runaway convict who spent years among the blacks, and who, when recaptured, narrated a history which nobody heard with much faith. According to his own account, Barber had twice traversed New Holland in a north-westerly direction by following the course of a river he alleged to rise from the western extremity of the chain of mountains by which Liverpool Plains is bounded. The river he represented as broad, deep, and unimpeded by obstructions in its course of many hundreds of miles. He described it as debouching in a lake of great extent which connected with the ocean. The natives of the coast informed him that strangers visited it for the purpose of procuring a scented wood, which they floated away in large quantities. They were described as wearing shirts and drawers, and as being armed with two spears, of which, however, they threw only the shorter one, but that one with great force. The " Barber " further embellished his narrative with reference to a great animal like a hippopotamus, a marine slug, large baboons, and a burning mountain on the far northern sea-coast. Lieutenant - Colonel Dumaresq had communicated the substance of this story to the Royal Geographical Society, and Cunningham had adversely commented upon it, finding in the references to the hippopotamus, the sea slug, the large baboons, and the burning mountain evidences of concoction. The more copious information of the present day will see a less proportion of fiction in the absconder’s narrative. The burning mountain and the large baboons must still be regarded as embroideries, but the large river flowing northward may be, perhaps, identified with the Victoria River of Mitchell, which indeed debouches in rainy seasons into a vast lake system, then communicating with the sea. True, Lakes Eyre and Torrens are at the south, not at the north, of the continent, and the Victoria takes a great turn to reverse its course. But confusion is no fiction, and the Malay traders for sandal-wood, with their clothed bodies and their bows and arrows, were real visitors to the Gulf of Carpentaria, while the dugong corresponds very well to the hippopotamus-like creature, and the sea-slug, or beche-de-mer, needs no identification.

Admitting that imagination invested every stage of their journey with peculiar and ever vivid interest for the explorers, a mere narrative is liable to read like a dull catalogue of geographical names. Some relief may, however, be afforded by passing allusion to the more interesting incidents of the journey by identification of the names conferred upon natural features with the individuals whose memory and whose merits this system of baptism was intended to perpetuate. Thus the Gilbert Ranges had for sponsor the naturalist of the party; Palm-tree Creek derived its title from its vegetation; the river Lynd was so styled in compliment to Mr. Barrack-master Lynd of Sydney, between whom and Leichhardt a warm personal friendship subsisted; a prominent hill was named after Mr. (since Sir Charles) Nicholson, then a member of the legislative council, who had originated the idea of an expedition to Port Essington; Albinia Downs, perhaps, enshrined the tenderness of Leichhardt for some fair one in other lands; the Comet Range and Creek recorded the coincidence of their discovery with the occurrence of a celestial phenomenon. At that creek the explorers found indications that they were not the first white men who had penetrated thus far into the interior. A half-caste was seen by them among the aboriginal natives, and they drew the inference that an absconder from the penal establishment at Moreton Bay had found his way thither. The river Mackenzie was so named in compliment to Sir Evan Mackenzie, a Scotch baronet of Kilcoy, in the county of Ross-shire, who was one of the foremost among the pastoral settlers of the Moreton Bay district, and to whose hospitality Dr. Leichhardt had, when in Brisbane, been greatly indebted. Sir Evan had, with an affectionate remembrance of his hereditary estates in Scotland, given the name of Kilcoy to his new domain on the upper waters of the Brisbane River, and, while Leichhardt thought to hand down his friend’s fame as a genial host by conferring his patronymic upon an important stream, Sir Evan’s agents were associating the historic names of Mackenzie and Kilcoy with the memory of a terrible deed. The wholesale poisoning of natives at Kilcoy Station has been narrated. The eminence which has since been attained by Mr. Robert Lowe, then a member of the council, now Lord Sherbrooke, was anticipated by attaching his designation to Lowe’s Peak. Old colonists will readily identify the sponsors for Lord’s Tableland, Campbell’s, Roper’s, an Scott’s Peaks, Coxen’s Range, Isaac’s River, Suttor Creek, Cape River, Mount McConnell, the Burdekin River, the Clarke River, and Mount Lang. At length a point was reached where the waters, hitherto trending to the south and east were observed to flow westerly and north-westerly. The first considerable stream met with flowing towards the Gulf of Carpentaria was named the Lynd, and, as the party still continued to persevere in their northerly course, Kirchner’s Range was crossed, and the valley of another river, named the Mitchell, after Sir Thomas, was entered. Here the explorers observed with interest an unprecedented form of native structure-two-storey huts, a style of native construction never since, we believe, seen. In the Mitchell crocodiles were seen, and in this region the travellers made their first acquaintance with the pestilent green tree-ants, which dropped upon them from the boughs, and drove man and beast half wild with their exasperating stings.

Subsequent explorers have, in considering Leichhardt’s route in the light of his declared intentions, doubted whether he was not progressing to a considerable extent at random in persisting so long in a northerly direction. Here, however, in latitude fifteen degrees fifty-two minutes thirty-eight seconds south, he turned sharply off, and bent his path to the westward. He found the country swarming with hostile natives, and a night attack by them resulted in a fatality which had nearly been a complete catastrophe. A shower of spears and waddies invaded the tents and pierced the bodies of three of the party. Poor Gilbert, the naturalist, was killed on the instant, but Roper and Calvert, the other sufferers, were able to take part in beating off the assailants. Their wounds, although severe, and aggravated by the necessity for continuous travel, were healed with marvellous rapidity, and they were fully convalescent before the expedition had penetrated far into the wide expanse of the Carpentarian plains, a stretch of which has won by its apparent fecundity the designation of the "Plains of Promise" —a promise still, at the present day, inviting but unfulfilled. By the time the party had arrived about the latitude where the present western boundary of the colony of Queensland is mapped, their clothing was in tatters, and their tea and sugar were expended. The seeds of the sterculia were now gathered and boiled to furnish a beverage, and the diet of the explorers was eked out with such accessories as green-hide soup, and "coffee" brewed from the roasted beans of a creeper, discovered first on the Mackenzie River. Further progress had now become a struggle for life. The horses gave in; three were abandoned at the Roper River. The baggage was reduced once and again, even the collections of natural history specimens having to be sacrificed. But the courage of the little band was sustained by their falling in with blacks, among whom were some who spoke a little broken English, and who intimated that the Port Essington settlement was not far remote. Leichhardt was about to sacrifice his last beast of burden —a bullock —to provide meat for his half-starved party, when, most encouraging sign of all, a herd of buffaloes, of the Indian species, originally imported to feed the people at the Port Essington establishment, and since run half-wild, was sighted. One of these he managed to shoot, and, refreshed by its flesh, he and his companions, in a few days, dragged their weary limbs into the settlement, where, on December 17th, 1845, they were welcomed, tended, and re-clothed by the commandant, Captain Macarthur.

No immediate opportunity for proceeding to Sydney presented itself; but at length, in the schooner "Heroine," the party sailed, and on March 29th, 1846, they landed in Sydney were they were received as men returned from the dead, all hope of their safety having long before been abandoned. An In Memoriam poem of decided merit from the muse of Barrack-master Lynd, published a few months before the reappearance of Leichhardt and his companions, is still extant, and may be reckoned, with the convict Barrington’s heroic verses, among the curiosities of Australian literature. These lines were set to music by Mr. Nathan, of Sydney, a composer of some note in his day, who had in London been brought into tolerably close acquaintance with. Lord Byron by undertaking to wed to appropriate sounds the "Hebrew Melodies" of the noble poet. The reappearance of the explorers gave the signal for a renewed outburst of the colonial muse, but the enthusiasm of the people did not confine itself to mere twangings of the lyre. A public subscription was instituted, and a substantial testimonial, in the form of a sum of nearly two hundred pounds, was presented to Dr. Leichhardt, and was supplemented by a donation of one thousand pounds from the coffers of the government, while the thanks of the legislative council were voted to him, and formally conveyed to him in full conclave by the speaker from the chair.

The exploit of Leichhardt undoubtedly merited all the appreciation which it evoked. It is, nevertheless, easy to perceive, after the lapse of years, that so far as the declared object of the expedition was concerned, his journey was at best only a partial success. The accomplishment desired by the commercial community was the discovery of a practicable overland route from Sydney to Port Essington, which should become an avenue for communication with the islands of the Eastern Archipelago, with India, with the open ports of China, and finally in the direction of England, although the Suez route can scarcely have been present very distinctly in the minds of the advocates of the exploration. The most direct possible route was, of course, desired, and in fact the proper point of departure had been much debated, Sir Thomas Mitchell strongly advocating Fort Bourke as the most advantageous when contrasted with the alternative from Moreton Bay. Now, Leichhardt’s route was so far from being direct that it could scarcely have been made more circuitous. He shunned the interior of the continent so persistently, and clung to the eastern side so long, that he penetrated far up into the base of Cape York Peninsula ere he struck off to the westward. He had actually to change his direction from a north-westerly to a southwesterly course in order to work round the Gulf of Carpentaria. Subsequent explorers have conjectured that he must have become bewildered at this part of his Journey. But the circumstance, if true, can now only redound to his fame. It is not the avoidance of difficulties, but the conquest over them, which marks the heroic temperament. Allowing that Leichhardt went astray, he persevered, and reached his goal.

Sir Thomas Mitchell, on the other hand, when his turn arrived, started on his journey with a truer aim, but had to stop short just where he might have been expected to strike off to the northwest, and make a real commencement of the serious work of crossing the continent in the direction of Port Essington.

SIR THOMAS MITCHELL.

MITCHELL’S style of exploration differed notably from the simple and inexpensive method which the limit of his means had imposed upon Leichhardt. Sir Thomas, as surveyor-general, and supported by the authorisation of the Colonial Office in England, had all the resources of the government placed at his disposal. Leichhardt plunged into the wilderness with half a dozen companions; Mitchell marched out with a little army. The convict establishment supplied the rank and file; the civil departments furnished the officers. As second in command, he had Edmund Kennedy, a surveyor endowed with intelligence, enterprise, and a fortitude which, as was to be proved in later years, no hazards could move and no misfortunes daunt. Mitchell was attended by his heavy waggons and his light carts. He carried portable boats on waggons expressly constructed for their conveyance. Skilled mechanics were enrolled among his followers, and the number of his attendants permitted him, whenever he so desired, to form a standing camp and detach light parties to make flying explorations from that as a centre. The aborigines occasioned him no anxiety. Yet, despite all these advantages, his expedition was, with respect to its ultimate object, a scandalous failure. Still the discoveries which Sir Thomas made were of considerable interest, and, by dilating upon these in his report, he succeeded in diverting attention from the total abandonment of the essential purpose of his expedition. He ascended the Balonne, and, guided by friendly natives, discovered and explored its affluent, the Culgoa. A tract of open downs country, upon which he conferred the name of the Fitzroy in compliment to the recently-arrived governor, was entered. The Maranoa River, which the natives called the Culba, next rewarded his search. Here a new tribe of aborigines was met with, and by them the travellers were pacifically, but with unmistakable emphasis of gesture, warned off their country. Sir Thomas left Kennedy encamped on the river with ten men, while he himself, with sixteen men, pursued his way up the river to the northward, each detachment being sufficiently strong to disregard the warnings of the aboriginal occupants of the district. Diverging from the Maranoa, Mitchell found himself, almost for the first time during this expedition, embarrassed by difficulty in finding water. From a somewhat critical situation, his party was extricated by a singular agency. One of his men, Felix Maguire, dreamed a dream. Thrice was his vision repeated, and each time it was the same. In a direction which was clearly indicated, and at a spot which he definitely described, there was water. As drowning men clutch at a straw, thirsty men are ready to pay attention to a dream. Not knowing whither to bend their steps, they took the course indicated in Maguire’s dream, and found the water exactly as had been described by him.

Isolated rocks, rising behind the trees, and resembling ruined castles, temples, and Gothic cathedrals, imparted a romantic aspect to the environments of a stream which emerged from a reedy lake, and prompted Mitchell to bestow on it the name of the Salvator, in consequence of the recollections of paintings by Salvator Rosa which the scene brought to his mind. Similarly, the pastoral beauty of the champaign country, which bordered another river, led him to adhere to his sentimental nomenclature, and this second stream received the name of the Claude, while an adjacent tract was invested with the title of the Mantuan Downs. The Salvator and the Claude join, and constitute the Nogoa. It is a little odd that Nogo-a is in English an almost exact equivalent for Belyan-do in blackfellow jargon. The latter is a name supposed to be derived from a combination of two words in the lingo used in communicating with the aborigines, and doubtless derived from some of the tribal dialects" bel " or " baal," no or not, and "yan," go, the meaning of the composite word being that farther progress was impossible. It was upon the Belyando that Mitchell next descended, after experiencing considerable difficulty in crossing the abrupt and broken range which separates the two river systems in this region.

By following the course of the Belyando, Mitchell found to his annoyance that in lieu of being, as he supposed, on the Carpentarian watershed, he was still on the coastal slope of the Pacific, and on his return to Sydney he conjectured that in all probability his Belyando, which he had hoped would lead him direct to the Gulf, was identical with the Cape River of Leichhardt; modern topography has shown that both are heads of the Burdekin. Frustrated in this direction, the explorer retraced his steps to his standing camp, and thence made a fresh departure to the north-west, striking the course of another river flowing southwesterly to which he gave the name of the Nive, and at last emerged upon a vast expanse of open downs extending to the horizon towards the northwest, and watered by a magnificent river flowing in the same direction. Mitchell now concluded that he had achieved the aim to which, latterly, he had restricted his endeavours. He had found a noble river flowing direct to the Gulf of Carpentaria. Without establishing the fact by protracted travel, he turned back, and commenced his retreat to the settlements, where his pompous announcement of his discovery of the Victoria River —named in honour of the young queen who had recently ascended the throne —was hailed with congratulations, and served to distract attention from his failure to even approximately define an overland route to Port Essington. He reached Sydney on December 11th, 1846, and died in that city nine years later, on October 5th, 1855. Sir Thomas Mitchell has left his name indelibly engraved on the face of the continent of Australia. He had personally headed four expeditions, all fruitful in discovery. Mitchell had fought under Wellington in the Peninsula war, and prior to his death had attained the rank of major-general. To considerable scientific attainments he added a wide general culture. He was resolute and energetic in his nature, and in the situation in which he found himself amidst a population constituted to a considerable extent of bondsmen and freedmen, he added to the authoritative bearing of the military officer the overbearing demeanour of one accustomed to be served by slaves. Between Mitchell and Leichhardt there existed a strong rivalry, which on Mitchell’s part, at any rate, degenerated into an unworthy jealousy. Leichhardt referred in a somewhat satirical way to the processional nature of Mitchell’s expeditions, and Mitchell laid no bounds upon the terms in which he criticised the circuitousness of Leichhardt’s "direct" route to Port Essington. With a coarse expletive, he described Leichhardt as "a coaster," alluding to the apparent reluctance of the unofficial explorer to venture far into the interior. Perhaps it was that epithet, reported by some "good-natured" friend, which fixed Leichhardt’s resolution to cross the continent from Moreton Bay to Swan River. Mitchell’s scientific attainments were considerable, and his mind was cultured. The hardy explorer of the mysterious interior of Australia was the author of a translation of the poems of Camoëns, and it is alleged that it is to his appreciative observation of the flight of the boomerang that the world owes some useful hints for the modification of the screw propeller.

The expectations which had been founded in the Victoria River were speedily set at rest. Kennedy was despatched to follow its course. He re-arrived on the lowest point of the river in August, 1847, and ere long discovered that not far beyond Mitchell’s farthest the stream curved to the westward, and with a wide sweep ultimately turned to the south-west, and proved to be identical with Cooper’s Creek, which Sturt had discovered in his latest exploration. The Victoria River is now known as the Barcoo, and the Thomson, one of its principal affluents, was discovered by Kennedy on this expedition.

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