108 A HISTORY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



they were disconcerted by exceptionally wet weather at first, storm 

 succeeding storm almost daily ; they were without tents, their 

 limited allowance of provisions suffered damage, and sodden by 

 day and night they began to break down. Burke suffered severely 

 from dysentery ; Gray succumbed to it, and was left in a shallow 

 grave among the spinifex bushes. The camels could not travel in 

 the sludge ; some were abandoned to their fate, one was killed and 

 jerked, and finally the half-starved horse shared a similar fate. 

 Two worn-out camels only remained, and Burke mounted on one, 

 with Wills and King on the other, they toiled desperately towards 

 the depot where they had left Brahe to await their return. Part 

 of the last week of their journey was across a waterless, stony 

 desert, which brought them to the verge of collapse, but on the 

 21st of April they dragged themselves into the depot, to find it 

 cruelly deserted. 



The unpardonable neglect of Wright to bring up the rear party 

 from the Darling, and the unduly prolonged absence of Burke in 

 the northern wilds, had reduced Brahe to an unbearable condition 

 of nervous anxiety, and on the morning of the very day on which 

 the luckless explorers returned he had started south, his party 

 well provided with provisions and means of transport. He left a 

 letter to that effect, enclosed in a bottle and buried with a quantity 

 of provisions. To the latter the half-starved explorers turned 

 ravenously for present consolation, and then sank into the deep 

 sleep of exhausted bodies and depressed spirits. Thus commenced 

 a course of most unhappy blundering and miscalculation, that 

 culminated in the prolonged suffering and death of the leaders, 

 entailed heavy expenditure with much labour and hardship on 

 search parties, and evoked a great display of angry recrimination 

 in Melbourne. 



Burke, mentally and physically enfeebled, shrank from under- 

 taking the journey of 360 miles to the Darling. He had heard 

 that pastoral settlement in South Australia had extended to within 

 150 miles of Cooper's Creek, and he resolved to make for the 

 nearest outlying station in that direction. Wills strongly urged 

 the following up of Brahe's party, who, as subsequently shown, 

 were camped only a dozen miles from them on the evening of the 



