"(Signed) WILLIAM J. WILLS."
"The depôt party having left, contrary to instructions, has put us in this fix. I have deposited some of my journals here for fear of accidents."
Having done this, Wills returned to his companions, being fed by the friendly natives on his way back. During the intercourse that of necessity they had had with the blacks during their detention on Cooper's Creek, they had noticed the extensive use the natives made of the seeds of the nardoo [See Appendix.] plant as an article of food; but for a long time they were unable to find out this plant, nor would the blacks show it to them. At last King accidentally found it, and, by its aid, they now managed to prolong their lives. But the seeds had to be gathered, cleaned, pounded and cooked, and even after all this labour (and to men in their state it was labour) very little nourishment was derived from eating it. An occasional crow or hawk was shot, and, by chance, a little fish obtained from the natives, and as this was all they could get, they were sinking rapidly. At last they decided that Burke and King should go up the creek and endeavour to find the natives and get food from them. Wills, who was now so weak as to be unable almost to move, was left lying under some boughs, with an eight days' supply of water and nardoo, the others trusting that before that time they would have returned to him.
On the 26th June the two men started, and poor Wills was left to meet his death alone. He must have retained his consciousness almost to the last. So exhausted was he, that death must have been only like a release from the trouble of living. His last entries, though giving evidences of fading faculties, are almost cheerful. He jocularly alludes to himself as Micawber, waiting for something to turn up. It is evident that he had given up hope, and waited for death's approach in a calm and resigned frame of mind, without fear, like a good and gallant man.
King and Burke did not go far; on the second day Burke had to give in from sheer weakness, and the next morning when his companion looked at him, he saw by the breaking light that his leader was dead.
This was the sad and bitter end of the high-spirited captain of this luckless expedition; an almost solitary death on the wide western plain, after enduring weeks of hunger and starvation. What must have been King's feelings at finding himself thus left without a companion to cheer his last hours when his turn, as he then thought, must inevitably soon come?
After wandering in search of the natives, and not finding them, the solitary man returned to Wills, who was also dead, and all he could do was to cover the body up with a little sand, without any hope that the same would be done by him.
Burke's last notes in his pocket book are as follows:—
"I hope we shall be done justice to. We have fulfilled our task, but we have been aban——. We have not been followed up as we expected, and the depôt party abandoned their post."
He winds up:—