“Ye who prepare with pilgrim feet Your long and doubtful path to wend. If whitening on the waste ye meet The relics of my martyred friend.
“His bones with reverence ye shall bear. To where some crystal streamlet flows: There by its mossy banks prepare The pillow of his long repose.
“It shall be by a stream whose tides Are drank by birds of every wing, Where Nature resting but abides The earliest awakening touch of spring.
“But raise no stone to mark the place. For faithful to the hopes of man. The Being he so loved to trace, Shall breathe upon his bones again.
“Oh meet that he who so carest, All bounteous Nature’s varied charms, That he her martyred son should rest Within his mother’s fondest arms.
“And there upon the path he trod, And bravely led his desert band, Shall science like the smile of God Come brightening o’er the promised land.
“How will her pilgrims hail the power, Beneath the drooping Myall’s gloom. To sit at eve and muse an hour, And pluck a leaf from Leichhardt’s tomb.”
—Lynd.
The following descriptions are taken from a journal of an expedition into the interior of tropical Australia in search of a route from Sydney to the Gulf of Carpentaria by Lieut.-Colonel Sir T. L. Mitchell, Surveyor-General of New South Wales, in 1845.
The money for this attempt was found by the Legislative Council of New South Wales. The Secretary for the Colonies sanctioned the expedition, which had been suggested by the leader himself, during a slack time in his department. This trip, though it never approached the Gulf, or even its watershed—which was its main object at starting—nevertheless discovered such an extent of available country as to make it one of the most valuable and interesting expeditions that were ever carried out in North Queensland. This was Mitchell’s third exploring trip, and it is referred to now, as it relates to the discovery and opening up of a large part of western, as well as a part of North Queensland. There is no doubt that Mitchell would have reached the Gulf waters if his equipment had not been so cumbersome and altogether dependent on good seasons. An account of his outfit will be interesting reading in these times when people think little of moving from the South to the North of Australia with any kind of a party, and his departure must have looked like the start of a small army on the move to conquer a new country. Sir Thomas Mitchell took with him eight drays drawn by eighty bullocks, two iron boats, seventeen horses (four being private property), and three light carts; these were the modes of conveyance. There were 250 sheep to travel with the party as a meat supply. Other stores consisted of gelatine and a small quantity of pork. The party consisted of thirty persons, most of whom were prisoners of the Crown in different stages of probation, whose only incentive to obedience and fidelity was the prospect of liberty at the end of the journey. According to the testimony of their leader, they performed their work throughout creditably; they were volunteers from among the convicts of Cockatoo Island, and were eager to be employed on the expedition. Some of those engaged on a previous trip were included in this expedition.