17 
He made a third start up Harvey's Creek, this journey including 
a semi-subaqueous walk of " eight miles up to their waists in the water 
of the flooded creek," to say nothing of vaulting up precipices seventy 
feet high, and falling from the top of others of even greater altitude ; 
these remarkable acrobatics being performed after being " four and 
a-half days without food of any kind " ! Mr. Sayer's disregard for 
food and the necessities of his epigastric region appears to have equalled 
his contemptuous indifference to the established laws of gravitation. 
At 3,000 feet he and his party were saved in the middle of the night 
by " the violent barking of their dogs " from being murdered in cold 
blood by a band of hostile blacks. This is the first time blacks have 
ever been seen camped at that elevation. He made a fourth effort, 
and on this occasion he says he reached the summit and stayed there 
with a Mr. Davidson and four kanakas for eight and a-half days ! 
Before leaving the summit they "cut their names, date, and height 
on an Elaeocarpus." The whole narrative is simply pure undiluted 
fiction, which one must sincerely and charitably hope is unintentional, 
and merely the natural outcome of Mr. Sayer's profound ignorance of 
bushmanship and the range he was attempting to explore. It remains 
for me to say that Mr. Sayer and Mr. Davidson never put a foot on 
any part of the summit of Bellenden-Ker, and that Baron von Mueller 
has incorrectly given the name of Bellenden-Ker to all the plants 
brought down by Mr. Sayer professedly from the summit of that moun- 
tain. I have been over the whole crest of Bellenden-Ker from end to 
end, the north peak alone excepted, without finding the remotest trace 
of any human being, black or white, and no mortal man could travel 
there without leaving tracks that would be visible for many years. 
There is no such tree as an elseocarpus on any part of the summit, 
and the supposition that six men could camp eight and a-half days 
there without leaving visible signs is really too preposterous to 
discuss. That Mr. Sayer and party were not on the north peak is a 
self-evident fact to me. His own account of the trip, as given in 
the Victorian Naturalist of July, 1887, shows that he reached, not the 
top of Belleuden-Ker, but the top of the eastward mountain previously 
mentioned, situated between Bellenden-Ker and the Russell, and 
forming no part of the Bellenden-Ker range. This mountain is 3,970 
feet high, and called by the blacks " Chickaboogalla." On his return 
from New G-uinea I met Mr. Sayer in Cairns, and, referring to his 
alleged ascent, he said, " When we got on top of one peak we saw 
another above us, and beyond that another and another, and we did 
not reach the highest peaks after all, but I mean to go back again." 
Now, this exactly describes " Chickaboogalla," and has no meaning 
at all when applied to Bellenden-Ker. Of course, at the last he saw 
peaks still higher, for the centre peak of Bellenden-Ker was 1,200 
feet over his highest point of ascent. And so on the summit of 
"Chickaboogalla" Mr. Sayer collected all the plants which Baron 
Mueller erroneously credits to the top of Bellenden-Ker ! It remains 
only now to say that Whelan, Barnard, and myself were the first who 
ever stood on Mount Sophia and the south peak of Bellenden-Ker; 
that Broadbent and myself were the first on the centre and highest 
peak ; and that myself and Harold were the first to traverse the 
summit between the centre and the north peaks. This statement can 
be safely regarded as a final settlement of the whole question and 
one admitting no refutation whatever. 
B 
