Cooper’s Creek lived chiefly on the seed of a plant which they called nardoo; so that, if they could only find a native tribe, they might, perhaps, learn to find sufficient subsistence from the soil around them. Accordingly, Burke and King set out to seek a native encampment; and, having found one, they were kindly received by the blacks, who very willingly showed them how to gather the little black seeds from a kind of grass which grows close to the ground.
With this information they returned to Wills; and, as the nardoo seed was abundant, they began at once to gather it; but they found that, through want of skill, they could scarcely obtain enough for two meals a day by working from morning till night; and, when evening came, they had to clean, roast, and grind it; and, besides this, whatever it might have been to the blacks, to them it was by no means nutritious—it made them sick, and gave them no strength.
Whilst they were thus dwelling on the lower part of Cooper’s Creek, several miles away from the depot, Brahe had returned to find them and bring them relief. On his way home he had met with Wright leisurely coming up, and had hastened back with him to the depot; but when they reached it they saw no signs of Burke and Wills, although the unfortunate explorers had been there only a few days before. Brahe, therefore, concluded that they were dead, and once more set out for home. Meanwhile Burke thought it possible that a relief party might in this way have reached the creek, and Wills volunteered to go to the depot to see if any one was there. He set out by himself, and after journeying three or four days reached the place; but only to find it still and deserted. He examined it carefully, but could see no trace of its having been recently visited; there could be no advantage in remaining, and he turned back to share the doom of his companions. He now began to endure fearful pangs from hunger. One evening he entered an encampment that had just been abandoned by the natives, and around the fire there were some fish bones, which he greedily picked. Next day he saw two small fish floating dead upon a pool, and they made a delicious feast; but, in spite of these stray morsels, he was rapidly sinking from hunger, when suddenly he was met by a native tribe. The black men were exceedingly kind; one carried his bundle for him, another supported his feeble frame, and gently they led the gaunt and emaciated white man to their camp. They made him sit down and gave him a little food. Whilst he was eating he saw a great quantity of fish on the fire. For a few minutes he wondered if all these could possibly be for him, till at length they were cooked and the plentiful repast was placed before him. The natives then gathered round and clapped their hands with delight when they saw him eat heartily. He stayed with them for four days, and then set out to bring his friends to enjoy likewise this simple hospitality. It took him some days to reach the place where he had left them; but when they heard his good news they lost no time in seeking their native benefactors. Yet, on account of their weakness, they travelled very slowly, and when they reached the encampment it was deserted. They had no idea whither the natives had gone. They struggled a short distance farther; their feebleness overcame them, and they were forced to sink down in despair. All day they toiled hard to prepare nardoo seed; but their small strength could not provide enough to support them. Once or twice they shot a crow, but such slight repasts served only to prolong their sufferings. Wills, throughout all his journeyings, had kept a diary, but now the entries became very short; in the struggle for life there was no time for such duties, and the grim fight with starvation required all their strength.
At this time Wills records that he cannot understand why his legs are so weak; he has bathed them in the stream, but finds them no better, and he can hardly crawl out of the hut. His next entry is, that unless relief comes shortly he cannot last more than a fortnight. After this his mind seems to have begun to wander; he makes frequent and unusual blunders in his diary. The last words he wrote were that he was waiting, like Mr. Micawber, for something to turn up, and that, though starving on nardoo seed was by no means unpleasant, yet he would prefer to have a little fat and sugar mixed with it.
4. Death of Burke and Wills.—Burke now thought that their only chance was to find the blacks, and proposed that he and King should set out for that purpose. They were very loath to leave Wills, but, under the circumstances, no other course was possible. They laid him softly within the hut, and placed at his head enough of nardoo to last him for eight days. Wills asked Burke to take his watch, and a letter he had written for his father; the two men pressed his hands, smoothed his couch tenderly for the last time, and set out. There, in the utter silence of the wilderness, the dying man lay for a day or two: no ear heard his last sigh, but his end was as gentle as his life had been free from reproach.
Burke and King walked out on their desperate errand. On the first day they traversed a fair distance; but, on the second, they had not proceeded two miles when Burke lay down, saying he could go no farther. King entreated him to make another effort, and so he dragged himself to a little clump of bushes, where he stretched his limbs very wearily. An hour or two afterwards he was stiff and unable to move. He asked King to take his watch and pocket- book, and, if possible, to give them to his friends in Melbourne; then he begged of him not to depart till he was quite dead: he knew he should not live long, and he should like some one to be near him to the last. He spoke with difficulty, but directed King not to bury him, but to let him lie above the ground, with a pistol in his right hand. They passed a weary and lonesome night; and in the morning, at eight o’clock, Burke’s restless life was ended. King wandered for some time forlorn, but, by good fortune, he stumbled upon an abandoned encampment, where, by neglect, the blacks had left a bag of nardoo, sufficient to last him a fortnight; and, with this, he hastened back to the hut where Wills had been laid. All he could do now, however, was to dig a grave for his body in the sand, and, having performed that last sad duty, he set out once more on his search, and found a tribe, differing from that which he had already seen. They were very kind, but not anxious to keep him, until, having shot some birds and cured their chief of a malady, he was found to be of some use, and soon became a great favourite with them. They made a trip to the body of Burke, but, respecting his last wishes, they did not seek to bury it, and merely covered it gently with a layer of leafy boughs.
5. Relief Parties.—When Wright and Brahe returned to Victoria with the news that, though it was more than five months since Burke and Wills had left Cooper’s Creek, there were no signs of them at the depot, all the colonies showed their solicitude by organising parties to go to the relief of the explorers, if, perchance, they should be still alive. Victoria was the first in the field, and the Royal Society equipped a small party, under Mr. A. W. Howitt, to examine the banks of Cooper’s Creek. Queensland offered five hundred pounds to assist in the search, and with this sum, an expedition was sent to examine the Gulf of Carpentaria. Landsborough, its leader, was conveyed in the Victoria steamer to the gulf, and followed the Albert almost to its source, in hopes that Burke and Wills might be dwelling with the natives on that stream. Walker was sent to cross from Rockhampton to the Gulf of Carpentaria; he succeeded in reaching the Flinders River, where Burke and Wills had been; but, of course, he saw nothing of them. M?Kinlay was sent by South Australia to advance in the direction of Lake Torrens and reach Cooper’s Creek. These various expeditions were all eager in prosecuting the search, but it was to Mr. Howitt’s party that success fell. In following the course of Cooper’s Creek downward from the depot he saw the tracks of camels, and by these he was led to the district in which Burke and Wills had died.
Several natives, whom he met, brought him to the place where, beneath a native hut, King was sitting, pale, haggard, and wasted to a shadow. He was so weak that it was with difficulty Howitt could catch the feeble whispers that fell from his lips; but a day or two of European food served slightly to restore his strength. Howitt then proceeded to the spot where the body of Wills was lying partly buried, and, after reading over it a short service, he interred it decently. Then he sought the thicket where the bones of Burke lay with the rusted pistol beside them, and, having wrapped a union jack around them, he dug a grave for them hard by.
Three days later the blacks were summoned, and their eyes brightened at the sight of knives, tomahawks, necklaces, looking-glasses, and so forth, which were bestowed upon them in return for their kindness to King. Gay pieces of ribbon were fastened round the black heads of the children, and the whole tribe moved away rejoicing in the possession of fifty pounds of sugar, which had been divided among them.
When Howitt and King returned, and the sad story of the expedition was related, the Victorian Government sent a party to bring the remains of Burke and Wills to Melbourne, where they received the melancholy honours of a public funeral amid the general mourning of the whole colony. In after years, a statue was raised to perpetuate their heroism and testify to the esteem with which the nation regarded their memory.
6. M?Douall Stuart.—Burke and Wills were the first who ever crossed the Australian Continent; but, for several years before they set out, another traveller had, with wonderful perseverance, repeatedly attempted this feat. John M?Douall Stuart had served as draughtsman in Sturt’s expedition to the Stony Desert, and he had been well trained in that school of adversity and sufferings. He was employed, in 1859, by a number of squatters, who wished him to explore for them new lands in South Australia, and having found a passage between Lake Eyre and Lake Torrens, he discovered, beyond the deserts which had so much disheartened Eyre, a broad district of fine pastoral land.
