INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 25 



fat, and supplied us with mucli excellent food, while the fat was used 

 for many purposes. I never could understand how it was that Burke, 

 Wills, and Kang did not catch fish, for King had hooks when we found 

 him. 



The only way in which I can account for the inability of Burke, 

 Wills, and King to do more for their sustenance than collect nardoo is 

 that not one of them had bush experience or knowledge of the food 

 which the natives procured. Among many other sources of supply 

 there were fish, crayfish (yabbies), and mussels in the waterholes, and 

 plenty of pigeons. 



While we were at the depot Brahe pointed out the place w^here 

 he made the cache and the tree on w^hich he cut the words and figures 

 " Dig. 21 April, 1861." I carefully examined the place, and Brahe 

 said, in reply to my questions, that everything was just as he left it, 

 the " plant " untouched, and nothing removed of the useless things 

 left but a piece of leather. I noticed that there were the ashes of three 

 small fires, which appeared to show that the blacks had been there, 

 but the loose, sandy soil was so run over by the tracks of birds and 

 small animals that no traces of footprints could be seen. It seems, 

 however, that the three small fires were made by Burke, Wills, and 

 King individually. I was surprised that the blacks had not found the 

 cache, because of the self-evident fact that something was buried there. 

 As we were supplied with stores for fully five months, there was no 

 need for the things which Brahe had buried there, and we went on, 

 thus leaving, for the time, the answer to the question which we had 

 come so far to solve. 



It has been asked Avhy Burke did not add something to the inscrip- 

 tion on the tree when he left to try and get to Mount Hopeless. The 

 explanation is to be found in King's evidence before the Royal Com- 

 mission : (o) " We did not expect the party to return ; we thought the 

 word ' dig ' would answer our purpose as well as it would theirs.'* 

 This was a mistake, because Brahe was with me ; otherwise the word 

 " dig " would have at once suggested my doing so. From this place 

 we had to look out for tracks, and in a few miles we found the track 

 of a single camel going eastward. That evening we camped about a 

 quarter of a mile below the place to which Brahe accompanied Burke 

 and the advance party on their outward trip. During the day we had 

 again seen the track of a camel, and where we were camped we saw 

 camel droppings — where Brahe said he was sure Burke's camels had 

 not been on his outward journey. On Burke's journey outwards the 

 (o) Op. cit.. Evidence, 1032. 



