522 NORTHMOST AUSTRALIA 



surveyors, missionaries, or other travellers who had a reasonable 

 claim. As my request was refused, I hold myself free of respon- 

 sibility for what happened when we were forced to take the law 

 into our own hands. R. L. J.] 



My party consisted of JOSEPH J. MACDONALD, JAMES S. LOVE, 

 and CHARLIE, a Townsville black. 



[Of my party and that of the prospectors, James Simpson 

 Love and the writer are believed to be the sole survivors. 

 There is some doubt in the case of Charlie, who was seen in 

 Townsville about 1910, and whose rumoured death a few 

 years later I have not been able to authenticate. 



JAMES SIMPSON LOVE, my stepson, was the youngest 

 member of the party. Born in 1863 at Fintry, Stirlingshire, 

 he was left at school when I married his widowed mother 

 in 1877 and left Scotland for Queensland. An inherited and 

 (as it appeared to me) almost " uncanny " leaning towards 

 horses led him to follow us to Queensland in 1879. One of 

 the portraits herewith was taken in 1878. When he arrived 

 the start of the " second " expedition was imminent, and with 

 a strength of will which has ever since stood him in good stead, 

 he insisted on joining it in spite of all opposition, including 

 my own, for I was of opinion that he was too young for the 

 hardships to be confronted. He proved himself, however, 

 highly adaptable, and it soon became obvious that the new 

 life was exactly suited to his bent. During the trip he learned 

 much from the admirable Crosbie, whose character and 

 attainments endeared him to the whole party. After the 

 expedition, he drifted into pastoral pursuits through the 

 usual channel of station life, specialising, later on, in the 

 breeding of horses, mainly of the type of " Waler " suitable 

 for Indian army remounts. The second portrait herewith 

 was taken in 1911. 



JAMES CROSBIE was born in Wellington, New Zealand, 

 in 1851. While still a boy, he joined an elder brother, a 

 sharebroker in Ballarat, Victoria, and engaged in mining. 

 After a time he migrated to Queensland and took up mining 

 on the Hodgkinson, and in 1879 ne was selected as the leader 

 of the prospecting party which I led through the Cape York 

 Peninsula on my " second " expedition. On that occasion 

 he was admired by all, not only for his cheerful and kindly 

 nature, but also for his accomplishments. He had cultivated 

 the art, or gift, of bushmanship until he was the equal of any 

 black tracker. On the faintest indication of the direction in 

 which his objective lay he would find it in spite of the absence 

 of landmarks, without the aid of compass or sextant, be the 

 distance ever so great or the timber ever so thick. On the 



