THE ADMINISTRATION OF SIR HENRY BARKLY 111 



and was attended and witnessed by many thousands of spectators. 

 All the shops were closed along the route, and the procession 

 included most of the members of the Government, the prominent 

 officials, from the Chief Justice downward, the foreign consuls, the 

 leading ministers of all the churches, and a huge following of 

 private citizens. It was not so much a national recognition of 

 a great heroic performance for, truth to tell, the expedition was 

 scientifically a failure but rather the expression of a widespread 

 feeling that there was something to be atoned for, some injudicious 

 management and unfaithful service, that had been responsible for 

 the disastrous result. 



Victoria had won the race in the competition for the first crossing 

 of the continent, but it had cost altogether seven lives, and a total 

 expenditure, including pensions to survivors and monuments to 

 the dead, of over 50,000. Now that Cooper's Creek is practically 

 a settled pastoral district, the story of the trials and sufferings of 

 this expedition seem almost incredible, for the journey so fraught 

 with misery has since been made by one Colonial Governor for 

 pleasure, and by several bicyclists for mere business purposes. A 

 huge granite monolith marks the place in the Melbourne Cemetery 

 where Burke and Wills were laid to rest, and the streets of the 

 capital are adorned by an heroic group in bronze erected in their 

 honour, from a design by Charles Summers, the first and finest 

 work of the kind ever produced in Victoria. 



Before this year was out Sir Henry Barkly had departed for 

 his new sphere of duty. He sailed in September, without any 

 ostentatious leave-taking, leaving behind him a strong Ministry to 

 carry on the business of the country, and bearing away the con- 

 sciousness of seven years' work faithfully done, undisturbed by any 

 of those constitutional struggles which involved his successor in such 

 woful shipwreck. 



