CARRON'S PARTY AT THE PASCOE RIVER 253 



Sunday morning sometimes under circumstances which would 

 have driven other men to work rather than to pray were persisted 

 in to the very last, although they seem almost invariably to have 

 been followed by some new disaster. Kennedy had the spirit which 

 drew from Job in his agony the defiant cry : " Though He slay me, 

 yet will I trust in Him, but I will maintain mine own ways." He 

 was revered and loved by all who shared with him the hardships of 

 the terrible journey. 



REQUIESCAT IN PACE ! 



A sufficient reason why no serious attempt has hitherto been 

 made to garner the geographical results of Kennedy's expedition 

 is to be found in the fact that the task was practically impossible 

 until the progress of settlement had brought with it the production 

 of land maps on which his course could be traced. 



CARRON AND WALL merit the highest commendation for the 

 fidelity with which they persisted in their scientific duties, even 

 when everything pointed to their efforts being made in vain. 

 Carron has furnished in his (which is the only) record of the 

 Kennedy expedition, a narrative as thrilling as that of Daniel 

 Defoe, and with the additional advantage of being true in every 

 line. 



Perhaps, after all, the hero of the tale is the aboriginal JACKEY- 

 JACKEY. The laurel wreath due to the first explorer to reach 

 Cape York by land would have been justly placed on his black 

 brow. The unavoidable limitations imposed on him by his 

 ancestry have already been pointed out, but 



" Though tawny was his hide, 

 He was white, clear white, inside," 



and in courage, prudence, resourcefulness and loyalty he could not 

 have been surpassed by the whitest of men. 



The "Ariel" arrived in SYDNEY on 5th March, 1849. A 

 reporter of the Sydney Morning Herald at once interviewed the 

 survivors of the expedition and the officers of the schooner. The 

 report gives an abstract of Jackey-Jackey's narrative, as taken down 

 by Dr. Vallack, and some further particulars which account for a 

 portion of the time spent on the forlorn hope between the Pascoe 

 and Cape York. These have already been embodied in notes 

 appended to Jackey-Jackey's " Statement." 



Jackey-Jackey now said that thirteen days elapsed between 

 KENNEDY'S DEATH and his own arrival at Cape York. On a critical 

 consideration of the statement, read in the light of other evidence, 

 I conclude that only ten out of the eighteen days are accounted 

 for. I have no doubt that Jackey-Jackey crawled along in a dazed 

 condition and was too far gone to take an accurate account of time. 

 He added that he had taken three spears out of Kennedy's body. 



