2 NORTHMOST AUSTRALIA 



The desire of the Government, and of the eager diggers 

 throughout Queensland, was to discover an alluvial goldfield on 

 the pattern of the Palmer, which was by that time approaching 

 exhaustion. 



A party of miners, headed by James Crosbie, volunteered to 

 go and settle the question of the existence of payable alluvial 

 gold, and they asked for and obtained government assistance, and 

 I was instructed to lead them to the spot. In addition, a pros- 

 pecting party was equipped, with money subscribed in Cook- 

 town, and sent out to anticipate the expedition subsidised by the 

 Government. 



The combined geological and prospecting parties left Cook- 

 town on 26th November, 1879, and striking out from the " bend 

 of the Kennedy " on the Cookt own-Palmer ville road, reached the 

 " Peach " (Archer) River on 2Oth December. The prospectors 

 commenced operations at once, and were rewarded with " pros- 

 pects " which led them into the jungle-clad recesses of the 

 Mcllwraith Range. Here, to their disappointment, although 

 prospects were obtained here and there, the creeks and gullies were 

 found to run over almost bare rocks, their beds being too steep 

 for the retention of any quantity of alluvial " washdirt." On 

 3oth December, the wet season set in. For the remainder of our 

 time in the field, the creeks were too swollen for the " bottom " 

 to be reached where there was any washdirt at all, or the ground 

 was too sodden to carry our horses. There were long and vexa- 

 tious delays when it was neither possible to work nor to travel. 

 Nevertheless, we continued, during breaks in the bad weather, to 

 cross the Mcllwraith Range and touch the Macrossan Range. 

 Regaining the summit of the Mcllwraith Range, we followed it 

 to its northern extremity, where the valley of the Pascoe River 

 separates it from the mountain mass which we named the Janet 

 Range. It was found that the Pascoe River bounds the Janet 

 Range on the south and east, and we practically followed it down 

 till we had finally to cross it where it took an easterly course 

 towards the Pacific. We had already made up our minds that it 

 was safer to chance the unknown in the north than to return to 

 Cooktown across several great rivers, now all certain to be flooded. 

 No sooner had we left the Pascoe than we entered on the Bad 

 Lands or Wet Desert of " heath " and " scrub " without anything 

 for horses to live on. From the Pascoe to the Escape River, our 

 course must have coincided in many places with Kennedy's on 

 his " forlorn hope " journey, and we repeated many of his experi- 

 ences, as told by his surviving companion Jackey-Jackey, but 

 happily not the series of disasters which resulted in his own death 

 and the disasters which overtook the two parties he left behind 

 to await the relief he went to bring. The natives displayed in our 

 case, as in Kennedy's, a persistent hostility which hampered our 



