Career of Dr. Leichhardt. 1 1 



of Leichhardt is the most popular and most highly honoured 

 of the learned names in Australia. Repeatedly we heard 

 him spoken of as the Australian Humboldt. Rendered all 

 the more eager by the success of his first enter j)rise, and 

 stimulated by the splendid Governmental reward of £10,000 

 for his last discoveries, the indefatigable explorer started from 

 Sydney in 1848, on a second journey, in which he intended 

 to examine Western Australia, by crossing from Moreton 

 Bay overland, to the West Coast and Port Essington. This 

 proved to be the close of his earthly career. All trace of the 

 lamented traveller has been lost, and even the admirably 

 equipped expedition sent out by the Colonial Government, 

 in March, 1858, under the experienced conduct of Mr. 

 Gregory, on the track of Leichhardt, spent long months 

 in fruitless wandering, and returned without any more 

 positive information as to the destiny of the sorely missed 

 naturalist, except the conjecture that Leichhardt and his 

 companions had fallen a victim not to the murderous hand 

 of the natives, but to the inhospitable nature of the region 

 they were traversing. They seemed to have left the Vic- 

 toria at its junction with the Alice (where it was thought a 

 trace of the travellers was discovered in some incisions made 

 in the bark of some trees),* and then attempted, favoured by 



* The expedition discovered on the, 21st April, 1858, in 24° 35' S. and 146° 6' 

 W., an ash tree, two feet in diameter, on whose huge trunk the letter L had been 

 deeply cut. Close by there were everywhere traces of a regular encampment, and an 

 impression pretty universally prevailed that Leichhardt and his companions had 

 camped here, and had cut this mark to indicate it. One of the oldest missionaries of 



