Atlas Page 58
By W. H. Traill

LEICHHARDT’S SECOND JOURNEY.

MEANWHILE, however, the indefatigable Leichhardt had been again bestirring himself. Little more than half a year after his reappearance in Sydney, he was off again to Moreton Bay with the determination to start, as before, from the Darling Downs and thence to traverse the continent from east to west, intending to make for the settlement at Swan River on the Indian Ocean. Accordingly, in December, he started from Jimbour station. He had eight companions, of whom Mr. Hovenden Hely, subsequently distinguished as an explorer on his own account, was one. A flock of goats, two hundred and seventy in number, ninety sheep, and forty head of cattle were driven before them by the party. But the attempt proved a complete failure. Dissension broke out among the explorers; probably there were too many equals. Almost certainly Leichhardt was a difficult man to get on with; his own journal of his first expedition affords ample proof of this. As therein described by himself, he seems to have been abstracted, moody, and unsociable. Anyhow, on this expedition much bad feeling arose between him and his companions. The party was also fever-stricken. They had to abandon their goats; they lost most of their bullocks and some of their horses and mules; in short, further progress became impossible. They turned back, abandoning a portion of their stores, and reappeared on the Condamine in a temper and a condition equally miserable, having merely gone over Leichhardt’s old track as far as the Peak Downs.

By this time the report of Mitchell had been made public, and Leichhardt, almost without resting, set off to inspect the country lying between his original track and that of Sir Thomas, and especially to visit the Fitzroy Downs. This seems to have been also an unsuccessful trip, and returning to Darling Downs he hastened to Sydney to make fresh arrangements for his great transcontinental project. By the middle of February, 1848, Leichhardt had completed all his preparations. His party, as reconstituted, consisted of Mr. Classan, a connection of his own whom he had met while last in Sydney, and who now took the position of second in command of the expedition a Mr. Hentig; Donald Stuart, one of Patrick Leslie’s tried men, another man named Kelly, and two native blacks. His stock consisted of fifty bullocks, thirteen mules, twelve horses, and two hundred and seventy goats. He was provided with eight hundred pounds of flour, one hundred and twenty pounds of tea, one hundred pounds of salt, two hundred and fifty pounds of shot, and forty pounds of powder. His intention was to follow the track of Mitchell from the sources near Mounts Abundance, Bindeygo, and Bindango —of the Coogoon River, by the Maranoa, to the Victoria River; thence he proposed to launch out to the westward. At a pastoral station, which had already been formed near Mount Abundance, he wrote on April 14th, 1848, his farewell letter to Sydney; then, for the last time, turning his back on the settlements, he marched into the silent wilderness, which shut him and his companions off for evermore from the sight of their fellow-men. From that day to the present hour the fate of Leichhardt has remained the dead secret of the Australian interior. Of Leichhardt and his companions not a trace has ever since been found. Of his flock of goats, of his horses and mules, of his bullocks, not a hoof or a horn has certainly been seen. Forty years have, as we write, elapsed, and still the fate of the lost explorers remains unrevealed. Even the icy fingers of the frozen North have been less retentive than the secretive grasp of central Australia. The fate of Franklin has been ascertained; the doom of Leichhardt no man knows.

EDMUND KENNEDY.

LITTLE more than a month after Leichhardt had penned the last words which the world was ever to have from his hand, another expedition, also destined to have a melancholy termination, was launching out in a different portion of what now constitutes the territory of Queensland. The mighty peninsula, which terminates in Cape York, had been, as regards its south-western base, partially traversed by Leichhardt in his first expedition.

But its eastern side and its centre remained a terra incognita. The home and colonial authorities were exercised at the time by the question as to whether Cape York might not be preferable to Port Essington, or at any rate a desirable addition to that post, as the locality for an establishment. In connection with this, the idea of exploring the peninsula itself seems to have arisen. The enterprise was decided upon, and in 1848 Edmund Kennedy was charged with the task for which his previous experience distinctly qualified him. His party was conveyed by sea to Rockingham Bay, and there landed. His mission was to make his way to the coast opposite All any Island at the apex of the cape; there he was to be met and taken off by a schooner, which was sent for the purpose. The journey proved laborious and unfortunate from the outset; the country to be traversed was rugged and in every sense difficult. Of the eleven white men who accompanied Kennedy, but a few were staunch and true. The carts with which the explorers were provided had soon to be abandoned. Impeded by mountains and ravines, torn by dense tropical jungles, through which every step had to be cut with axe and tomahawk; frequently worried by hunger and tortured by thirst, haunted and harassed by bold and hostile natives, progress was one continual struggle. Terribly exhausted, and with stores alarmingly diminished owing to the necessary abandonments of portions when the drays were left behind, and when horse after horse failed and fell, Kennedy emerged, after toiling over five hundred miles of wilderness, upon the shores of Weymouth Bay. In the course of this desperate journey, he must repeatedly have trodden wealth under his feet. His track carried him through the centre of what little more than a score of years later were destined to be famous goldfields the Hodgkinson and the Palmer among others. It had become obvious to Kennedy that with the whole party he could not hope to proceed farther. He took three whites and his black fellow, Jacky Jacky, with horses, and pushed on, leaving the remaining seven men under the charge of Mr. Carron, botanist and second in command, to rest and recover until he should reach Albany and return to their rescue by sea. Misfortune still pursued him. For food he had to sacrifice horses, and live on the smoked flesh of these worn-out animals. And presently one of his companions, while carelessly dragging his gun into the tent, shot himself, receiving a severe flesh wound. The case of the little party was too desperate to permit of delays. Next day they again pushed forward, but the sufferings of the wounded man became insupportable. Once more the unhappy leader had to divide his party and sacrifice himself. At Shelburne Bay he left the wounded man, with his two comrades to guard and tend him. Kennedy himself, with Jacky Jacky for his sole companion, struggled forward, with all the speed his increasing weakness permitted, to traverse the ninety miles or so which still separated him from Albany Strait. His steps were dogged by the ferocious blacks, who had never ceased to follow and menace his reduced party. Seven weary days and nights the two men —the white and the black —struggled desperately on like haunted creatures, their impish attendants hovering continually around them. Their horses were almost useless. One got bogged in a swamp, and a whole day was vainly spent in the endeavour to extricate the feeble brute. Then Jacky Jacky implored Mr. Kennedy to abandon the other wasted and leg-weary animals; but Kennedy would not —nay, he could not —he was too weak to hope to reach his goal without them. The blacks gibbered and scuttled around them. Every bush and every rock, every creek and every scrub seemed peopled with demons. The haunted men could not, even when night fell, sink to the ground and seek renewal of strength in sleep —"Sweet nature’s soft restorer, balmy sleep." They dared not, when darkness set in, light a fire and thus betray their position. They must needs drag on their weary limbs yet apace, and hope to elude in the obscurity their keen eyed pursuers. And even when at length they ventured to halt, it was to watch and slumber alternately, each relieving the other every hour. At last-at last they saw the shining sea! Albany was in sight, and salvation at hand! But one more night, and then a single day of struggle, and they would be among their expectant waiting friends But the skulking foe had gathered courage as the prey grew feebler. Kennedy, utterly worn out, was seated on the ground. In front, on either side, and behind him the forest was filled with menace. The twigs were crackling under sneaking feet. . Hideous faces protruded from behind tree trunks and fallen logs. Jacky Jacky, gun in hand, stole out to execute a sortie, and create a diversion. He warned his weary master to have a quick eye to see, and to keep looking, around and behind. But poor Kennedy was afflicted with extreme shortness of sight at the best of times. In his weakened condition, probably he could scarcely see at all. He did not look behind. Like savage beasts, which the power of the human eye can control, the savages seized their chance. A shower of spears was hurled from behind him. One pierced his thigh, and another quivered in his back, and a third buried itself in his side. Jacky Jacky ran to him. The prowling assassins skulked out of gunshot. Kennedy charged his blackfellow to take his papers and save himself. He even asked for a pencil to write; but it was too late. His clouding eyes assumed a curious look. "Oh, Mr. Kennedy," cried Jacky Jacky, "don’t look so far away!" But the soul of the explorer had followed his gaze to the mysterious far away. Poor Jacky Jacky cried a good deal, and remained helplessly by his dead master till he "got well." Then he made shift to bury the body after the best fashion he could; this done he plunged into the bush, and fled for his life. The wild blacks hung upon his tracks. Repeatedly, to elude their bloodthirsty pursuit, he slid silently into creeks and waded long distances, his head only above the water. Only after fourteen days of such travel did he reach the shore. The schooner was there. Her crew saw descending to the beach a blackfellow in shirt and trousers. The boat received him —an emaciated care-worn wretch, whose energies collapsed on the moment, and who sank, apparently expiring, in the bottom of the boat.

Tended and refreshed, his touching and melancholy narrative was soon told. The anchor was weighed, and sail was made for Shelburne Bay, where the three white men ad been left; there a canoe came off filled with natives. With singular effrontery, they had with them spoils of the missing men, and even the trousers in which the corpse of Kennedy had been clad when buried. Jacky Jacky recognised one of his master’s murderers. The wretch was seized and bound. The other natives took the alarm and paddled for the shore under a fire of musketry, which did some work; but in the night the captive managed to loosen his bonds, slip overboard, and, by swimming, scathless reach the shore.

Sail was made for Weymouth Bay in the faint hope of rescuing the main body of the expedition. There four of the crew landed, and led by Jacky Jacky arrived just in time to witness a singular scene. Two enfeebled wretches were in the very act of holding at bay a lot of cowardly blacks. The two men were too weak to stand —almost too weak to sit upright altogether too weak to bring their guns to their shoulders. One held his across his knees; the other steadied his piece on a sapling. All the rest were dead. At the sight of the rescuing party the blacks sullenly retired. The two living men were conveyed to the vessel; they had an awful history to relate. They had been harassed by the blacks day and night ever since Kennedy quitted them. The tactics of their persecutors had been incomprehensible. Early, these had brought the half-starved party a tempting lot of fish, and made signs to them to come forth and enjoy it; the whites suspected a trap, and abstained. Then they had showers of spears, sudden solitary attacks, apparently commiserating doles of fish, and then attacks again. By spear wounds, by hunger, by sleeplessness, and by continual deadly fear, they were destroyed one by one. The dramatic attitude in which the last two were discovered by the rescuers was no casual incident. It had been their posture, off and on, day after day. As cowardly as cruel, the blacks had never dared to face them while in an attitude of watchfulness and defence. They were simply harassing them to death-watching and waiting, night and day, for a chance to steal on them unperceived, and slaughter them without risk to themselves. Thus ended Kennedy’s last expedition. Of the twelve men whom he led forth, three returned to the settlement. His own remains —but it is as painful as vain to contemplate their dispersal; they can never be all collected. The spear-pierced corpse of the lion-hearted explorer suffered a fate more revolting than befell the mangled body of Jezebel. There are in the Australian bush human dogs more bestial than the curs of Samaria.

SUBSEQUENT EXPLORATION.

THE deplorable result of Kennedy’s expedition sharpened the anxiety which had begun to be felt respecting the fate of Leichhardt. Persistent rumours had been coming in from the frontier stations that some catastrophe had overtaken his party shortly after their plunge into the wilderness. The natives told dismal but various stories, all pointing to some misfortune. At length, in January, 1852, Hovenden Hely was despatched to follow U the tracks of the expedition, and ascertain the facts if possible. He effected next to nothing. From a tribe of blacks he heard a circumstantial narrative describing the murder of Leichhardt and his whole party about one hundred miles northwest of Mount Abundance; but another story attributed their destruction to a great flood which had swept them all away. Hely, however, found two of their camps considerably farther to the northwest than the scene of the alleged fatal inundation, but, his provisions running short, he was compelled to beat a retreat to the settlement.

After this failure several years elapsed. Interest in the fate of Leichhardt gradually dwindled. Mr. A. C. Gregory, indeed, in 1855, after extensive explorations in northwest Australia, crossed the base of Arnhem’s Peninsula, and reached the Roper River in the Gulf of Carpentaria, whence he journeyed partly along the course of Leichhardt’s first expedition in the Carpentarian country, and, following up the Lynd, crossed to the Burdekin, traced that river down to the Belyando, ascending which he made his way by the Suttor and Mackenzie to a station on the lower Dawson.

But in 1857 the memory of the lost explorers was suddenly and vividly reawakened by a curious episode. A convict, named Garbut, communicated to his custodians a queer story. He had been a frontier bushman, and he alleged that he was willing to purchase his liberty by disclosing a secret of momentous interest. He had, he stated, visited, far beyond the outposts of settlement, in the heart of the continent, a colony of absconders from the old penal establishments. There, in a rich and well-watered tract, these runaways had established themselves —their numbers grown considerable by successive arrivals of runaways. They had married native women, and lived in peace and plenty. Communication was maintained with the settlements by means of packhorses. Thus the absconder colonists obtained not only implements and necessaries of European manufacture, but even luxuries. The position of this extraordinary community Garbut indicated to be some two hundred miles to the north-east of Hely’s farthest. The most startling part of his story was that Leichhardt and his companions were living, unwilling guests, detained by the people of this colony. The explorer had come upon their retreat, and, lest he should disclose their secret to the authorities, he and his whole expedition were compelled to abide. This romance momentarily created strong excitement; but discussion and reflection speedily exposed its improbabilities. Nevertheless, the emotion created was probably the essential influence in promoting the organisation of a new expedition in search of traces of Leichhardt. Mr. Gregory was entrusted with the leadership, and, starting from Juandah Station on the upper Dawson, he effectually exploded the fictions of Garbut by passing through the alleged location of the absconders’ paradise. On Mitchell’s Victoria River (the Barcoo) Mr. Gregory found, eighty miles beyond Hovenden Hely’s farthest exploration, a tree marked L, with traces of a camp of Europeans. It has been doubted whether this was, as he conjectured, a camp of Leichhardt’s, or one of Kennedy’s, when the latter was following up the explorations of Mitchell. Kennedy’s fiftieth camp was supposed to have been somewhere in this vicinity, and the L might be the Roman numeral instead of the initial of Leichhardt’s name. Pursuing their north-westerly course, Gregory and his eight companions struck the Alice, and ran it down to its junction with the Thomson. The latter they endeavoured to follow upwards in the direction which Leichhardt might have been expected to proceed; but defeated in this purpose by want of water, they retraced their steps, and like Kennedy worked downwards towards Cooper’s Creek. The journey was dismal and monotonous. The river spread into an infinity of channels, and every token showed that in flood time a whole territory was inundated. Mr. Gregory considered that the floods would lay the country under many feet of water across a tract not less than eighty miles in width. When he traversed it, this depressed area was dry and barren; its monotony oppressed, and its desolation appalled. At Cooper’s Creek the scattered channels temporarily united, and fine reaches of water existed; continuing southward, again the channel branched into numerous divisions. Occasionally they ran out altogether on flats or plains where no special depression could be distinguished. By this time Gregory was in the territory of South Australia. Tracing the channel known as Strzelecki’s Creek, he was by it guided to the desolate and saline banks of Lake Torrens. Thence the intrepid explorers had no trouble in reaching Adelaide, where they were received with enthusiasm.

It would be wearisome to recount in detail all the explorations from this time forward. With the exception of the extreme easterly portion of the colony and the north-westerly part of York’s Peninsula, the entire territory had been threaded with a tracery of explorers’ routes which left little scope for the imagination. The day of illimitable distances and boundless expanses was nearly over; pastoral settlement was spreading and extending in every direction. It had become a profitable enterprise to push on in advance, explore, and define in detail tracts of country suitable for runs, and sell the information to stockowners desirous of establishing new stations. The journals and reports of the earlier explorers were eagerly studied, and where, within accessible distance from the rapidly advancing frontier line of occupation, tracts of rich country were indicated in these documents, hardy bushmen pushed out little expeditions of their own, and buried themselves in the interior for months at a time.

They travelled on until they found a stretch of attractive country, and then they traversed it in every direction, exploring tributary creeks, locating lagoons and water holes, and roughly mapping the whole. On their return to the settlements they applied for leases of the areas thus defined, and these leases were marketable commodities. In 1858-9 William Landsborough in this fashion explored in detail a considerable stretch of territory on the Isaacs and the Suttor; George Elphinstone Dalrymple organised an expedition by land, and ran down the Burdekin towards the sea, while a hired schooner sailed up the coast to meet him at Upstart Bay. In the following years the hot-headed and unfortunate Burke crossed and recrossed the only portion of the colony which remained untraversed —the extreme west —from Cooper’s Creek to the Gulf of Carpentaria, and three relief expeditions, simultaneously launched from starting-places widely apart, to rescue him or ascertain his fate, added considerably to the knowledge of the interior. Of these, the expedition under M’Kinley, with whom was W. O. Hodgkinson, started from the south, skirting Sturt’s Desert, where in flooded country such as Gregory had traversed, in the same neighbourhood, they found in native camps some goats’ hair —relics of Leichhardt’s flock. Thence the party pushed on northward, and, passing successively Middleton’s, Hamilton’s, and Warburton’s Creeks, crossed or skirted in the following order the ranges now known as Crozier’s, Williams’, Kirby’s, and Sarah’s; the last named they observed to be metalliferous. Pursuing their course by the Marchant, Williams’, and Poole’s Creeks, they descended on the Cloncurry River, and reached the coast through the Plains of Promise, where they found Captain Norman, R.N., on the river Albert with H.M.S. "Victoria," and the wreck of the tender "Firefly" moored as a hulk in the river.

These vessels had conveyed the expedition under Mr. Landsborough, disembarking it near the juncture of the Barclay and Albert. Landsborough proceeded to scour the adjacent country, and followed up the Albert for one hundred and twenty miles, seeing no traces of the missing explorers. Returning to his starting-point, he found that M’Kinley and Walker had previously arrived there.

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