Nov. 8, 1858,] IN SEARCH OF LEICHHARDT AND PARTY. 33 



gather little information, as only a collective number of about 100 

 men, a few women and cbildren, were seen in small scattered parties ; 

 but, judging from the number of encampments seen, at least a 

 thousand must visit the banks of the river ; and it is probable that 

 the whole of the inhabitants for at least a hundred miles on each side 

 are dependent on it for water during the dry season. 



Neither sex wear any clothing. Their weapons and utensils are 

 similar to those used on the eastern coast ; nor was there any cha- 

 racteristic by which they could be observed to differ from the abo- 

 rigines of other portions of Australia. 



Fish, rats, grass seeds, and a few roots, constitute their chief food. 



On the upper part of the river they bury their dead, piling wood 

 on the grave ; near the junction of the Thompson they suspend the 

 bodies in nets, and afterwards remove the bones ; while on Cooper 

 Creek the graves are mounds of earth 3 to 4 feet high, apparently 

 without any excavation, and surmounted by a pile of dead wood. 

 In the last-named locality the number of burial mounds which had 

 been constructed about two years ago greatly exceeded the propor- 

 tion of deaths which could have possibly occuiTcd in any ordinary 

 season of mortality, even assuming the densest population known in 

 any other part of Australia ; and it is not improbable that the seasons 

 of drought which proved so destructive to the tree vegetation higher 

 up the river may have been equally disastrous in its effects on the 

 aboriginal inhabitants of this portion of the interior. 



A. C. Gregory. 

 Sydney, 27th August, 1858. 



The President. — I am happy to hear that the views of so experienced an 

 Australian traveller as Mr. Gregory coincide with the opinion I have so fre- 

 quently expressed as to the probable saline condition of the interior of Aus- 

 tralia. I'liis is the same gentleman who performed that remarkable journey 

 from North Australia to Sydney, which obtained for him our Gold Medal. 

 He is the first man who has gone far to determine the great problem, by 

 journeys on three sides of Australia, that the great interior is a saline desert. 



Count Strzelecki, f.r.g.s. — The valuable i)aper which was just commu- 

 nicated to the Society suggests at its outset a painful reminiscence, and as 

 painful regret that Mr. Gregory's expedition, undertaken with a view to ascer- 

 tain the fate of the deeply-lamented Lcichhardt, has failed in the humane 

 object with which it was conceived, and that, like the preceding ones, it only 

 adds fresh evidences of the indubitable loss which the public has sustained. 

 The services of Lcichhardt deserved indeed all the efforts which New South 

 Wales has been making in search of him. In about 1840, while I was 

 engaged in surveying the south of that colony, Leichhardt began his career of 

 an explorer in the north of Moreton Bay : in 1846 he undertook and accom- 

 plished the perilous journey across from Brisbane waters to Port Essington, 

 which, from its dangers, privations, and value of geographical discoveries, 

 earned for him the well-deserved honours which this Society and the colony 

 so justly bestowed upon him. Unfortunately, in the end or the commencement 



VOL. HI. D 



