Appendix T. 505 



and for no better reason than that ' he was afraid of their being too 

 friendly, lest they should be always at the camp.' Not manj'- 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 di- 

 rection 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 Bidlo 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 countrj^ 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 watei-ed 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 compara- 



