Once across the waters that wend their sluggish way into the lake district of South Australia, Leichhardt and his followers would be in the great region of fragmentary watercourses; rivers and creeks, when met with, pursuing no definite courses—now lost in miles of level country, now reforming again for a brief existence, but always delusive and disappointing. Here they would one day find themselves in a position that left them no other chance but the slender one of still pushing forward into the unknown. Probably it was during one of the cycles of rainless years that periodically visit the continent. Led on mile after mile, following the dry bed of one creek, to lose it in some barren flat, whereon the withered stalks of blue-bush alone told of a time of past vegetation; again picking up another creek, to lose it in like manner, knowing that to retrace their steps was impossible; making at last for a hazy, blue line in the distance that turned out to be spinifex and stunted forest; trusting still that this might indicate a change that would lead them to higher country and to water, they would struggle forward, weak and disorganised.
Then would come the beginning of the end. As they pressed on, the forest became scantier, and the spinifex higher, spikier, and harder to march through. One by one their animals had fallen and died, and the desperate resort of drinking the blood had been tried by some. What little water they had in their canteens was fast evaporating. Still some of them would keep heart. The ground was getting stonier, and bare patches of rock were constantly passed; surely they must be getting on higher country; they were doubtless ascending the gradual rise of one of the inland watersheds, and suddenly they hoped the ground would break away at their feet in deep gullies and ravines; below they would see the tops of green trees, shading some quiet waterhole. How anxiously they looked out for any sign of life that might be a good augury of this, but none could be seen.
Since leaving the open country, even the tireless kites had deserted them; all around was silent, still, and lifeless. It was useless to stop to rest, the ground was blistering to the touch, and there was no shade anywhere. Then came night, but no change; throughout the long watches, the radiance of the stars was never blurred by clouds. Some of the men slept and dreamt of streams of clear, cold water, awaking only to greet the dawn of another day of blinding, stifling heat, heralded by the faint sultry sigh of the hot wind. And as the day grew hotter and hotter some lost their reason, and all lost hope. Then came the end; they separated and straggled away in ones and twos and fell and died. Day after day the terrible and pitiless sun .looked down at them lying there, and watched them dry and shrivel into mummies, and still no rain fell on the earth.
By day the sky was clear and bright, and by night the stars unclouded. Years may have passed; higher and higher grew the spinifex, and its long resinous needles entangled themselves in each other, unchecked by fire for no black hunters came there in that season of drought, and the men's bodies lay there, growing more and more unlike humanity, scorched by the seven times heated earth beneath, and the glaring sun above untouched, save by the ants, those scavengers of the desert, or the tiny bright-eyed lizards. At last, the thunder clouds began to gather afar off, and when they broke, a few wandering natives ventured into the woods, living for a day or two on the uncertain rainfall. This failing, they retired again, leaving perhaps, a trail of fire behind them. Then this fire, fed by the huge banks of flammable spinifex, the growth of many years, spread into a mighty conflagration, the black smoke covering half the heavens. The hawks and the crows fled before it, swooping down on the vermin that were forced to leave the shelter of log and bush. The great silence that had reigned for so long was broken by the roar, and crash, and crackle of a sea of flames; and beneath this fiery blast every vestige of the lost explorers vanished for ever.
When, on the blackened ground, fell heavy rain once more, the spinifex sprang up, fresh and green to look at, only in spots here and there, where a human body had fertilised the soil, it was greener than elsewhere.
So Leichhardt drops out of Australian history, and with every succeeding year the chances of finding any trace grow more remote.
Expeditions have been started in search of him, but without result, and the tale of their efforts will be told in their proper order.
As if the year 1848, when Europe seemed convulsed with some strange tempest of riot and turmoil, should not be unmarked in Australia, two of the most disastrous expeditions in the annals of exploration started during its course. One, Leichhardt's, as we have just seen, vanished, and all must have perished. Of the other, under Kennedy, two ghastly famished spectres, that had once been white men, and a naked blackfellow, alone were rescued out of thirteen.
The same impulses that led to Mitchell's and Leichhardt's northern journeys, started Kennedy on his fatal venture up the eastern slope of the long peninsula that terminates in Cape York. The desire to find a road to the north coast, so that an available chain of communication should exist between the southern settlements and a northern seaport.
Kennedy started from Sydney on board the barque TAM O'SHANTER, on the 29th of April, 1848. He had twelve men in his party, including Mr. Carron as botanist, one of the survivors who published the account of the trip, and Mr. Wall, naturalist. Their outfit consisted of twenty-eight horses and one hundred sheep, besides the other necessary rations, carts, &c. The instructions were to land at Rockingham Bay, and examine the eastern coast of the peninsula, to Port Albany in the extreme north, where a ship would meet and receive them. Such was the programme, alas for the performance!