HISTORICAL REVIEW OF VICTORIA. 



35' 



William Brahe, pending the arrival of Wright. The latter did not leave Menindie until 

 the 2;th of January, 1861, and on the way up to Cooper's Creek the party was 

 attacked by scurvy, to which Becker and two of the assistants succumbed. With a 

 dilatoriness which is quite inexplicable, Wright moved forward, so slowly that on the 

 2gth of April he had not reached the Creek, .but met Brahe and his party returning 

 thence. Brahe had patiently waited 

 at the depot for four months and 

 four days, and then, despairing of 

 Burke's return, had started south- 

 ward on the 2 ist of April. 



In the meantime Burke and 

 Wills were pushing across the Con- 

 tinent, with heroic determination but 

 injudicious speed. They reached 

 the tropics on the /th of January, 

 1 86 1, and they stood upon the banks 

 of the Flinders River on the loth 

 of February. By this time their 

 provisions were reduced to eighty- 

 three pounds of flour, thirty-eight 

 pounds of meal, twelve pounds of 

 biscuit, the same quantity of rice, 

 and ten pounds of sugar, and on the 

 2 ist of February they began to re- 

 trace their steps. The whole of 

 the party soon afterwards fell ill, 



and their provisions began to run short. They were obliged to leave one of the 

 camels behind, and to kill two of the others, as also the horse. During the night 

 of the 1 6th of April, Gray died, and five days afterwards the three survivors reached 

 the depot at Cooper's Creek, and found it deserted. On a tree was the direction : 

 " Dig three feet westward." There they came upon a camel-trunk containing a letter 

 stating that Brahe and his party had left the depot on that very clay. Even then, 

 so leisurely did the latter move, if Burke, after a night's rest, had followed them 

 up, he would have overtaken them, or failing that would have met them returning to 

 Cooper's Creek ; for Brahe and Wright went back to the depot, arrived there on the 

 8th of May, and never thought of looking to see if the buried provisions had been 

 disturbed. Had they done so they would have found a letter from Burke stating that 

 he and his companions had started off in the direction of Mount Hopeless sixteen days 

 previously. Baffled in their attempts to reach South Australia by that route, the three 

 men would have starved, but for the seeds of the nardoo plant, which forms an article 

 of diet with the natives in the district. Wills struggled back to the depot on the 3Oth 

 of May, buried his journal there, but discerned no traces of the place having been 

 visited since he left. On rejoining Burke and King, all three met with kindly treatment 

 from some natives, but fatigue, hunger, and the inclemency of the winter nights had 



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