"'A few days after Mr. Wills left, some natives came down to the creek to fish at some water-holes near our camp. They were civil to us at first, and offered us some fish; on the second day they came again to fish, and Mr. Burke took down two bags, which they filled for him; on the third day they gave us one bag of fish, and afterwards all came to our camp. We used to keep our ammunition and other articles in one gunyah, and all three of us lived together in another. One of the natives took an oil-cloth out of this gunyah; and Mr. Burke, seeing him run away with it, followed him with his revolver, and fired over his head, and upon this the native dropped the oil-cloth. While he was away, the other blacks invited me away to a water-hole to eat fish, but I declined to do so, as Mr. Burke was away, and a number of natives were about who would have taken all our things. When I refused, one took his boomerang and laid it over my shoulder, and then told me by signs that if I called out for Mr. Burke, as I was doing, that he would strike me. Upon this, I got them all in front of the gunyah, and fired a revolver over their heads; but they did not seem at all afraid, until I got out the gun, when they all ran away. Mr. Burke, hearing the report, came back, and we saw no more of them until late that night, when they came with some cooked fish, and called out, "White fellow." Mr. Burke then went out with his revolver, and found a whole tribe coming down, all painted, and with fish in small nets carried by two men. Mr. Burke went to meet them, and they wished to surround him; but he knocked as many of the nets of fish out of their hands as he could, and shouted out to me to fire. I did so, and they ran off. We collected about five small nets of cooked fish. The reason he would not accept the fish from them was, that he was afraid of being too friendly, lest they should be always at our camp. We then lived on fish until Mr. Wills returned.'
"This method of dealing with the natives was surely, to say the least of it, exceedingly injudicious. They had, it appears, always shown themselves friendly to the explorers; and, in the weak state of the party, it was little short of madness to run the risk of disturbing the friendly relations between them and the blacks by any act of violence. And yet we find Mr. Burke actually attacking them, and taking forcibly from them the food which they had always shown themselves ready to give;
and for no better reason than that 'he was afraid of their being too friendly, lest they should be always at the camp.' Not many days later Mr. Burke died while making a last attempt to rejoin those very natives whom he had driven away. It is scarcely possible to avoid the conclusion that Mr. Burke's judgment must have been materially weakened by the sufferings and privations he had undergone, before he could possibly have acted in so utterly unaccountable a manner.
"We must now say a few words as to the route taken by Mr. Burke on his journey from Cooper's Creek to Carpentaria, and the nature of the country through which he passed. His first idea after reaching the Creek was to proceed due north, and four tentative expeditions were made in that direction, one of which was pushed to a distance of ninety miles. Finding, however, that the ground was too rough, either for horses or camels, he finally resolved to proceed in a north-westerly direction as far as Eyre's Creek, and at that point turned northward, and crossed the continent by a route which lies mainly on or about the 140th meridian of east longitude. The country does not appear to be difficult to traverse; and Mr. Wills tells us that the worst travelling-ground they met with was between Bullo and Cooper's Creek. As regards the nature of the land, Mr. Burke briefly sums it up in the following words: 'There is some good country between this (Cooper's Creek) and the Stony Desert. From thence to the tropics the country is dry and stony. Between the tropics and Carpentaria a considerable portion is rangy, but is well watered and richly grassed.' Mr. Wills reports that 'as to pasture, it is only the actually stony ground that is bare, and many a sheep-run is, in fact, worse grazing than that.' As regards the supply of water, it appears that the expedition, except when actually crossing the desert, never passed a day in which they did not traverse the banks of, or cross, a creek or other water-course. The whole country appears, in short, to be admirably adapted for pastoral purposes, and its discovery cannot but add largely to the resources of the Australian colonies. Sir Henry Barkly, the Governor of Victoria, in a despatch to the Duke of Newcastle, states that the occupation of "Burke's Land" with stock is already seriously contemplated by the squatters, and that there seems little reason to doubt that in the course of a few years the journey from Melbourne to Carpentaria will be performed with comparative
facility by passing from station to station. He adds that much of the country traversed by the expedition between the Darling and Cooper's Creek is already taken up, so that both sheep and cattle are now depastured within 25 miles of Bullo, stretching thence easterly along the Queensland boundary in an almost unbroken chain. These anticipations are fully confirmed by the report of Mr. Landsborough, the Queensland explorer. This gentleman, who has crossed the continent from Carpentaria to Melbourne, gives the most favourable account of the pastoral capabilities of the country which he traversed, and does not hesitate to express an opinion that within twelve months the whole of it will be taken up by settlers. We need not therefore hesitate to conclude, with Sir Henry Barkly, that 'the results attained by the expedition are of the very highest importance, both to geographical science and to the progress of civilization in Australia.'"
APPENDIX II. (p. 131.)
The following pathetic address, recently transmitted by H.E. Sir George Grey to the Duke of Newcastle, H. M. Secretary of State for the Colonies, for presentation to Her Majesty under her recent bereavement, also attests the deeply poetic vein that marks the Maori character.
Oh Victoria, our Mother!—We greet you! You, who are all that now remains to recall to our recollection Albert, the Prince Consort, who can never again be gazed upon by the people.
We, your Maori children, are now sighing in sorrow together with you, even with a sorrow like to yours. All we can now do is to weep together with you. Oh, our good mother, who hast nourished us, your ignorant children of this island, even to this day!