204 NORTHMOST AUSTRALIA 



He may have given these readings to Carron at the request of the 

 latter, or Carron may have assisted in the observations and noted 

 the results. 



The leader kept a DIARY, which was LOST, or lost all but a few 

 unimportant scraps. Carron kept a private diary, but that portion 

 of it which would have been of geographical value, bringing the 

 travels of the party to his last camp at the mouth of the Pascoe 

 River, was lost, and it was only from an abstract of it that he recon- 

 structed his narrative. 



Practically, the only record of the ill-fated expedition is con- 

 tained in an octavo booklet entitled : 



" Narrative of an Expedition undertaken under the Direction of the late Mr. 

 Assistant Surveyor, E. B. Kennedy, for the Exploration of the Country lying between 

 Rockingham Bay and Cape York : By WILLIAM CARRON, one of the Survivors of 

 the Expedition " ; 



to which are added : 



(1) " The Statement of the Aboriginal Native JACKEY- JACKET, who accompanied 

 Mr. Kennedy"; 



(2) " The Statement of DR. VALLACK and CAPTAIN DOBSON, who rescued the 

 Survivors of the Expedition " ; and 



(3) " The Statement of CAPTAIN SIMPSON, of the ' Freak,' who proceeded in 

 search of Mr. Kennedy's Papers, etc." 



The booklet was printed in Sydney in 1849 by Kemp & Fairfax. 

 It is now almost inaccessible to the public, the only copy for sale in 

 Sydney being priced at three guineas. It has, however, been 

 substantially incorporated in the Voyage of the " Rattlesnake" 

 and an examination of the copy in the Mitchell Library enables me 

 to point out the omissions from the reprint. 



1. The Statement of Captain Dobson, of the "Ariel" is 

 omitted entirely. 



2. In Captain Simpson's Statement, the portion of the diary 

 relating to the voyage from the Percy Islands to the Claremont 

 Islands is omitted. 



3. In " Rattlesnake" II, p. 263, after the words " pick them up," 

 the following passage seems to have been inadvertently left out : 



" At 2 p.m., the tide commenced ebbing, the schooner got under way and 

 worked down towards the ' Freak. 1 At half-past 6 p.m., the tide being down, the 

 schooner anchored about I mile to the northward of us, while I returned on board." 



Besides Carron's Narrative, some facts have been gleaned from 

 documents in the Parliamentary Library of New South Wales, to 

 which I obtained access through the courtesy of Mr. Charles Walsh, 

 Parliamentary Librarian. Chief among these are : 



(0) A notice of the arrival at Sydney, on 5th March, 1849, of the schooner " Ariel" \ 

 printed, together with an interview with the Survivors, in the Sydney Morning Herald 

 of 6th March, 1849. 



