292 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION E. 
On reading this account I felt certain that the remains were 
those of Gray, the fourth member, and the first to succumb, of 
Burke’s heroic little party. Doubts have been expressed as to 
this being so, and being probably the only person. who can now 
throw any light on the question, I have thought it well to record 
what I know, and the inferences which I draw from M‘Kinlay’s 
account of the events at Massacre Lake. 
Burke, Wills, and King, on their return from the Gulf of Car- 
pentaria, reached the depdt at Cooper’s Creek on the 21st of 
April, 1861, to find it deserted. Four days previously Gray had 
died, after being carried on a camel for several days. Wills did 
not fix the positions of the camps on the return journey after the 
1itth, in Lat. 19° 27” and Long. 140° 59", and therefore the 
exact place where Gray was buried has remained in doubt. All 
that can be said is, that according to the evidence given by King 
before the Royal Commission which sat. in 1861, it was about 15 
miles from Cooper’s Creek and 70 from the depot. 
In the few notes which Burke made there is this record :— 
“Gray died on the road from hunger and fatigue.” He was the 
first to die from the same causes to which Burke and Wills after- 
wards succumbed. The gradual starvation from which they 
suffered commenced shortly after they started on their return 
journey from the gulf. The rations of provisions were then re- 
duced to + lb. of flour and ten sticks of dried meat per day, and 
as King puts it, “as much Portulac as they could collect by the 
way.” On the 25th of March Wills found Gray eating “ skili- 
golee,”’ made from flour which he had taken without permission. 
Wills says that he received a “ good thrashing from Burke,” but 
King says that he “received six or seven blows with the open 
hand on the ear.” As King was present, and as Wills was absent 
at the time, the account by the former is the most probable. 
As I have said, Gray died on the 17th April, and his comrades re- 
mained there the following day to bury him. They left there 
some camel pads stuffed with horsehair, a tin-pot and some 
other things. It is also said that the spot was near a large lake. 
When I returned to Cooper’s Creek on my second journey, I 
formed a depdét at a place called by the natives Kallioumaru, or, 
as it is now shown on the maps, Callumurra, I established 
friendly relations with the Yantruwunta blacks who lived there, 
and who were those with whom I had found John King living. 
At this time our intercourse was carried on entirely by signs 
and gestures, they having no English beyond the words “ wilt- 
fella,” “ yarraman,” and “ ‘mukketty,’ ,’ meaning white man, horse, 
and gun. These words must have been transmitted from tribe 
to tribe, until they reached the wild blacks. When I opened up 
a line of communication with the South Australian settlements 
at Blanchwater, I obtained a black boy, Frank, who belonged 
to the Narrinyeri tribe at the Murray River mouth. This boy 
