LEICHHARDT'S OVERLAND EXPEDITION 195 



he handed a gun and ammunition to the aboriginal Charley, and 

 then dropped dead. " The spear," says Leichhardt, " had entered 

 the chest between the clavicle and the neck ; but made so small 

 a wound that for some time I was unable to detect it." 



" Mr. ROPER had received two or three spear wounds on the scalp of his head : 

 one spear had passed through his left arm, another into his cheek below the jugal bone, 

 and penetrated the orbit, and injured the optic nerve, and another in his loins, besides 

 a heavy blow on the shoulder. MR. CALVERT had received several severe blows from 

 a waddi ; one on the nose, which had crushed the nasal bones ; one on the elbow, and 

 another on the back of his hand ; besides which, a barbed spear had entered his groin, 

 and another into his knee. As may be readily imagined, both suffered great pain and 

 were scarcely able to move." 



Both the wounded men recovered rapidly. Calvert was able 

 to resume his duties by 2 1st July. 



The JOURNEY WAS RESUMED on 1st July, and SALT WATER was 

 met with on the 5th, in an inlet from the Gulf of Carpentaria. It 

 is of interest, before going further, to quote Leichhardt's own 

 summing-up of his progress to this point. He remarks, with 

 satisfaction : 



" We had now discovered a line of communication by land between the eastern 

 coast of Australia and the Gulf of Carpentaria. We had travelled along never-failing 

 and, for the greater part, running waters ; and over an excellent country, available, 

 almost in its whole extent, for pastoral purposes." 



On Jth July, the party forded a salt-water river, in 16 30' S. lat., 

 which Leichhardt (erroneously, following Flinders, who followed 

 Tasman) supposed to be the " Percfs " STATEN REVIER, but which, 

 it is now clear, must have been the " Perots " NASSAU REVIER. It 

 would be impossible to restore the original name, and long use has 

 indelibly stamped the river as the STAATEN, dejacto. 



On 9^ July, the explorers camped on what Arrowsmith's map ' 

 called the VAN DIEMEN RIVER. This, according to modern maps, 

 is the SMITHBURN MOUTH OF THE GILBERT, erroneously identified 

 by Flinders as Tasman's Van Diemen River. On the I2th 9 13 

 miles to the south-west, they crossed a small river which Leichhardt 

 named the GILBERT. (SEE MAP M.) This appears to have been 

 CROOKED CREEK (ending in ACCIDENT INLET), below the modern 



camp was attacked one evening and Mr. Gilbert lost his life. Long afterwards, the 

 undoubted cause of this apparently unaccountable attack transpired, in the acknow- 

 ledgment, while intoxicated, by one of the persons concerned, that a gross outrage 

 had been committed upon an aboriginal woman a day or two previously by the two 

 blacks belonging to the expedition." (Voyage of the " Rattlesnake," I, 313.) 



Macgillivray, who was a man of sound and temperate judgment, and who had more 

 than once been confronted with the aboriginal problem in its most practical form, must 

 be respectfully heard, and it may be presumed that he had satisfied himself of the 

 truth of the story, although, as he tells it, it certainly would not pass for legal evidence 

 in a court of justice. 



1 A ustralia, from Surveys made by Order of the British Government combined with those 

 of D'Entrecasteaux, Baudin, Freicinet, etc., etc., by John Arrowsmith, 1838. Evidently 

 the map by which Leichhardt travelled. 



