On reaching the station, Dr. Leichhardt was put in possession of the finding of the Victoria, the Maranoa, &c., and being anxious to examine the country between Sir Thomas Mitchell's track and his own, he, in company with Mr. Isaacs and three of his late companions, left Stuart Russell's station on a short excursion, during which he crossed to the Balonne and back, making some subordinate discoveries.
Still persisting in his idea of crossing the continent, and fearful that he might be forestalled, he made great efforts to get together a small party of some sort to make another attempt. He succeeded; but this time his party was neither so well provided nor so large. In fact, very little is known of the members constituting it. The Rev. W. B. Clarke, speaking of this final trip, says:—
"The parties who accompanied Leichhardt were, perhaps, little capable of shifting for themselves in case of any accident to their leader. The second in command, a brother-in-law of Leichhardt, came from Germany to join him just before starting, and he told me, when I asked him what his qualifications for the journey were, that he had been at sea, had suffered shipwrecks, and was, therefore, well able to endure hardship. I do not know what his other qualifications were."
For some inexplicable reason, this man, whose name was Classen or Klausen, has always been selected as the hero of the many tales that have been brought in of a solitary survivor of the party living in captivity with the natives; probably, because his was the only name besides Leichhardt's generally known and remembered.
The lost expedition is supposed to have consisted of six whites and two blacks. The names known are those of the Doctor himself, Classen, Hentig, Stuart, and Kelly. He had with him fifty bullocks, thirteen mules, twelve horses, and two hundred and seventy goats, beside the utterly inadequate allowance of eight hundred pounds of flour, one hundred and twenty pounds of tea, some sugar and salt, and two hundred and fifty pounds of shot and forty of powder.
His last letter [See Appendix.] is dated the 3rd of April, 1848, from McPherson's station on the Cogoon, but in it he speaks only of the. country traversed, and says nothing of his intended route. Since the residents of this outlying station lost sight of him and his men, no clue to his fate has ever been found. The total evanishment not only of his men but of the animals (especially the goats) that accompanied him, is one of the strangest mysteries of our mysterious interior.
Leichhardt's expressed intention was to endeavour to skirt the edge of the desert—which was then supposed to exist in the centre—to the northward, seizing the first opportunity of penetrating it, and then making for Perth. From what we now know, it is quite impossible to guess how much or little of this programme was carried out, as the existence or non-existence of what he would consider a desert would entirely depend upon what the season had been like immediately before his arrival.
The perusal of his journal to Port Essington, impresses one with the opinion that, considering his scientific training, he was singularly deficient in observation. In one place he writes that horses and bullocks never showed that instinctive faculty of detecting water so often mentioned by travellers, and that they seem to be guided entirely by their sight when in search of it—an assertion which seems incredible on the part of a man with any bush training at all. If Leichhardt had ever had to steady a thirsty mob of cattle during a pitch dark night, with a strong wind blowing from water, or even across the damp bed of a lagoon or river, miles and miles away, he would soon have found out by what sense cattle are guided in their search for water.
Although one does not want to harshly criticise these obvious errors in the very rudiments of bush-craft, they serve to indicate how likely he would have been, if entrapped in dry country, to commit a mistake that would sacrifice his men. And one cannot but believe that he relied quite as much on the chapter of accidents to pull him through as upon his own helpfulness or experience. Of the causes that led to the destruction or dispersion of the whole of the party it is next to impossible to hazard a guess. The completeness of the disappearance is the most the puzzling part of the mystery. Had they been killed by the natives, relics of the explorers would long since have been recovered from them. In some shape the iron work of the implements they had with them would have survived.
Many have tried to explain it by imagining them swept away by a flood when camped on flat country, but this is scarcely likely, for even then, on the subsidence of the waters, the blacks would have found something of their belongings. Thirst was most likely the agent of their destruction, and fire completed the work.