McILWRAITH AND MACROSSAN RANGES 727 



flies, and a little gold is to be found in all the creeks and gullies right through. The 

 distance to the Pascoe River, where Mr. Dickie stopped prospecting last year, is 55 

 miles, and over this country, too, gold is to be found in places. [Queensland Government 

 Mining Journal, I5th December, 1910, p. 603.] 



This chapter may appropriately close with a tribute to the 

 memory of JAMES DICK. 



Dick came from Victoria to Cooktown shortly after the outbreak 

 of the Palmer Goldfield. In 1876 he was at work in the diggings 

 of Sandy Creek, when his health failed and he returned to Cooktown. 

 Here he found employment in the store of the late John Walsh. 

 Later on he started the Little Wonder Store and selected land on 

 Carroll's Creek. When his family grew old enough to run the selec- 

 tion, he himself followed his natural bent and went prospecting on 

 every opportunity. He claimed to have " worked on or visited every 

 field in the Cook district." A painstaking habit of recording every 

 incident touching the development of the Cape York Peninsula 

 made him eventually a never-failing authority on historical 

 questions. 



For some years he was a member of the Municipal Council of 

 Cooktown and in 1906 he (unsuccessfully) contested a seat in 

 Parliament. Patriotic and public-spirited, he devoted himself 

 without stint to the best interests of the district in which he had 

 cast his lot. He was a voluminous writer, but unfortunately many 

 of his articles were contributed to journals which had only a 

 fleeting existence and are inaccessible and practically lost. 



A list which I am aware is far from complete of articles 

 and pamphlets written by him is given in the appendix. One of 

 them practically forms the text of this chapter. 



Another pamphlet, " A Geological and Prospecting Expedition 

 which filled up many Blank Spaces," etc., was, in a sense, responsible 

 -if or the present volume. In its serial form, as it appeared in the 

 'Port Douglas Record, he sent it to me, with an intimation that he 

 intended to reissue it in a book or pamphlet. Its perusal brought 

 home to me very acutely what I had long been conscious of, viz., 

 the injury which had been done by the publication of my report 

 i on the expedition referred to without the accompanying map, 

 which was an essential part of it. If Dick, a friendly critic and a 

 competent observer, and familiar with the district, could fall into 

 the mistakes which he did, how could the general reading public 

 be expected to understand ? I begged for and secured a delay in 

 the issue of the pamphlet until I should have time to correct it 

 in so far as statements of fact were concerned. 



It so happened that when Dick's communication reached me 

 [ was already engaged in the preparation of an annotated reissue 

 of my original official report (by that time long out of print), with 

 the map which should have accompanied it on its publication. 

 This task having been accomplished in course of time, I felt 



: 



