Mitchell's only hope of retrieving himself now lay in crossing the Darling, and making an inroad upon the interior; but the feasibility of this course was suspended on a doubtful contingency. Fearing his provisions would not hold out so long as would be necessary, he had, before leaving the Peel River, sent Finch back to the Hunter district for fresh supplies, and the future of the expedition depended on this forlorn hope. Finch returned about the time expected, but only to bring a tale of disaster instead of a supply of provisions. All had gone well till they had got beyond the Liverpool Plains, when water began to fail them. Finch had gone on to search the country in advance, and on returning found his party murdered and the camp sacked. This was a crowning calamity. Mitchell, of course, now saw that it would be impossible to proceed further, and it was even very doubtful whether they could return in safety. A wet season was setting in, and 200 miles of flooded country lay between them and their homes. Their return, accordingly, was conducted after the manner of a retreating army, and the similitude was all the more striking because they were harassed by hostile tribes of aborigines. But the settled districts were soon reached, and there was no further difficulty in making Port Jackson. It was, indeed, a disappointment to the authorities, as it had been to Mitchell, to find they had been duped by "George the Barber." Yet the expedition had opened up a vast extent of pastoral country, and on the whole was fairly successful as an exploring enterprise.
II.
Major Mitchell, full of enterprise, was again in the field of discovery in 1835. His failure in the affair of the "Kindur" had not discouraged him, and the experience incidentally gained was an excellent preparation for the more arduous work of the future. Public attention had again turned from the north to the westward of the colony, and another attempt was to be made to lift the veil which still shrouded so much of the interior. At the request of the British Government, Mitchell willingly undertook the conduct of an expedition to the Bogan and the Darling, in order to set at rest some geographical problems which were still attached to the course of these rivers.
More than any of the other explorers, Mitchell believed in large and liberally equipped expeditions, here probably erring by excess, and he resolved that the present should not be deficient in either respect. The party, all told, consisted of twenty-four persons—Major Mitchell as leader, Richard Cunningham, brother to the more celebrated Allan Cunningham, botanist and explorer, a young surveyor of the name of Larmer, and twenty-one convict servants, nine of whom had been connected with the "Kindur" search. The material resources consisted of two boats, several drays, a good contingent of horses, bullocks, and sheep, together with an ample supply of provisions. The start was made from Parramatta on the 9th of March; but the work of exploration proper did not commence till they reached Buree, a frontier station near Mount Canobolas, about 170 miles from Sydney.
Having taken his observations from the summit of this mountain, Mitchell fixed his direction on the bearing of 60° west of north, judging he would thus find a practicable route, and strike the Bogan somewhere in its upper course. The result answered his expectation. On the 13th of April he crossed the Goobang, a tributary of the Lachlan, and in two days more the Bogan was reached. Here a most lamentable event occurred, which cast its dark shadow over the whole of their future wanderings. Richard Cunningham, the botanist of the expedition, had been too much in the practice of leaving the party for the "pursuit of flora," and now failed to find his way back to the camp. For a long time no trace of the missing man could be found; but after a most diligent search tracks both of himself and of his horse were observed. These were followed for 70 miles, but to no purpose; distressing suspicions also began to arise, pointing to foul play on the part of the natives. But nothing definite could be arrived at, and after a fortnight's fruitless searching and tracking, the expedition was sorrowfully compelled to hold on its course. Subsequently it was decisively ascertained that Cunningham, ready to perish of hunger and thirst, had sought refuge with the blacks, by four of whom he was savagely murdered in his sleep. A full investigation was made by Captain Zouch, who had been despatched from Sydney on this business. He succeeded in discovering the dead man's bones, which were decently interred, and a suitable monument was erected on the scene of this diabolical murder. Three of the perpetrators of the crime were also arrested; but, through the remissness of the constable in charge, two of them managed to escape.
The explorers still kept the line of the Bogan, moving off and on to its banks according as the want of water, or the desire to cut off an observed elbow, more particularly directed their course. By the 20th of May the expedition had arrived at the Pink Hills, where the best grazing land was met with since the commencement of the journey. From this point Oxley's Table-land, a well-known landmark with former explorers, was plainly visible. On the 25th they were gratified by the discovery of the junction of the Bogan and the Darling rivers. The former of these, though only now brought into prominent notice, had been known to exist for many years past. It was first discovered by Hamilton Hume in connection with Sturt's expedition to the Macquarie, and was then called New Year's Creek. Much later its upper course had been traced by a Mr. Dixon for 67 miles, and the exploration of its whole length was thus completed by Major Mitchell in 1835. The Bogan was found to head from the Hervey Range, and this explorer had the good fortune to discover its termination in the Darling River after a sinuous course of 250 miles. At best it is only a third or fourth-class river; but, as it traverses a tolerably good grazing country, its basin has become fully occupied for squatting purposes.
The junction of these two rivers now became an important landmark for the remainder of the journey, and the place has ever since played a conspicuous part in the opening up and settlement of the back country. The position consists of an elevated plateau overlooking a reach of the river a mile and a half in length, with a hill situated near a sharp turn at the lower end of the reach. Having now travelled 500 miles from Sydney, the whole party were in need of rest, and Mitchell wisely resolved on fixing a permanent depôt here. Intending to leave some of his men while engaged in the exploration of the lower course of the river, he considered it an act of prudence to enclose the depôt with a stockade, as he was not yet sufficiently acquainted with the natives of the Darling to trust them with any degree of confidence. A stockade was accordingly constructed of rough logs, and to this, his first attempt at bush fortification, he gave the name of Fort Bourke, in compliment to the Governor of the colony. Such was the beginning of Bourke, the now famous centre of our back country settlement, and the present terminus of the Great Western Railway of New South Wales.
Two boats, as already noticed, had been brought all the way from Sydney as part of the furniture of the expedition, and the time seemed to have arrived for their being turned to account. Being found to be in perfect order they were forthwith christened the Discovery and the Resolution, and launched on the feeble current of the Darling. But hope was excited to no purpose. The stream was too low and the channel too much impeded to permit of navigation even with the smallest craft, and the undertaking was no sooner initiated than it had to be abandoned. The former plan of the expedition had again to be adopted, and the progress on the Darling was very similar to what it had been on the Bogan. The country traversed was found to be inferior as a whole, only moderately valuable for pastoral purposes, and nowhere adapted for agriculture to any considerable extent. The incidents in this part of the march were neither numerous nor striking. The usual privations arising from want of water were hardly known, as the explorers were never far from the banks of a running stream which takes rank among the foremost in Australia. The saltness of the Darling, which proved such an inconvenience to Sturt, was found by Mitchell to exist in a much less degree, which shows that it must have arisen in part from temporary causes.
If Mitchell's narrative is not so rich in thrilling incidents as a sensational reader could have wished, it is especially valuable as a record of the manners and customs of the aborigines of those districts, as they appeared to the eye of this intelligent and observant traveller. Sometimes the description is so life-like that we are almost cheated into the belief of a visible reality, and it is impossible to be indifferent to the exhibition, although the whole race has now well-nigh passed away. The account is very generally the reverse of Captain Sturt's, notwithstanding that both of these eminent explorers must have had in view substantially the same tribes. The judicious reader will scarcely be disposed to agree unreservedly with the Captain when he depicts them as the "most miserable wretches" under the sun; neither will he care to subscribe to the unqualified language of the Major, who describes them as "happy" savages. Truth seldom lies in extremes, and it is to the utmost extreme that these authorities have gone, each in his own way, as determined largely, perhaps, by his idiosyncrasies. But the ethnologist, in particular, will be thankful for the literary photograph of these vanishing tribes which has been preserved in the pages of this journal. The general reader, too, will gladly observe some curious incidents of aboriginal life in the interior of Australia. Mitchell specially notices their adroitness in procuring the wild honey of the bush. With great tact they first attached a piece of light down to the bee, which, on being released, would be sure to make straight for its nest. To discover this secret, the blackfellow engaged in hot pursuit; and, as his eye must be constantly on the tiny insect, there would, of course, be frequent tripping, and many an awkward fall on mother earth, but the excitement was too great to permit of anything short of a serious accident being noticed. Another characteristic of the untutored savages was their unwillingness to recognize the right of a white man to hold property—it was all meum and no tuum with them. For a while Mitchell tried to satisfy them with liberal gifts, but giving only increased the craving for more; and, what was worse, this liberality on the part of the strangers began to be construed as an indication of fear, and then the demands were more impudently pressed than ever, which caused these gifts, very properly, to cease altogether. And now their thieving propensities broke out beyond all bounds. Mitchell, like Apollo when Mercury filched his bow, hardly knew whether to smile at the adroitness of the thief or wax indignant at the loss of his property. The cunning, craft, and success of these barbarians went almost beyond credence. Not only their hands were busy, but their very feet and toes picked up the strangers' tools as they walked over them. This latter practice was considered a real accomplishment, and these savages seemed to have a genuine contempt for the clumsy white-fellows who could not use their "feet fingers." Barring this troublesome propensity, the native tribes did not cause much inconvenience to the expedition until it got as far down the Darling as the Menindie quarter, where a serious embroglio occurred, which occasioned the shedding of aboriginal blood, and compelled the explorers to desist from the further prosecution of their journey. For this untoward event, however, Mitchell was not to blame, and he regretted he had to deal with convicts who were so difficult to control. The local tribes having thus become exasperated, a somewhat hasty retreat had to be made to the central depôt at Bourke, after 300 miles of the Darling had been traversed, and little doubt being left as to the remainder of the course till the junction with the Murray.