aken to supply the party with beef, in the meantime
carrying the expedition stores. The bullocks' pack-saddles were huge,
ungainly frames of wood fastened with iron-work, rings, etc.

Shortly after the expedition made a second start, two or three of the
members again seceded, and returned to the settlements, while
Leichhardt and his remaining band pushed farther and farther to the
west.

Although the eastern half of the continent is now inhabited, though
thinly, no traces of any kind, except two or three branded trees in
the valley of the Cooper, have ever been found. My belief is that the
only cause to be assigned for their destruction is summed up in the
dread word "flood." They were so far traced into the valley of the
Cooper; this creek, which has a very lengthy course, ends in Lake
Eyre, one of the salt depressions which baffled that explorer. A point
on the southern shore is now known as Eyre's Lookout.

The Cooper is known in times of flood to reach a width of between
forty and fifty miles, the whole valley being inundated. Floods may
surround a traveller while not a drop of local rain may fall, and had
the members of this expedition perished in any other way, some remains
of iron pack-saddle frames, horns, bones, skulls, firearms, and other
articles must have been found by the native inhabitants who occupied
the region, and would long ago have been pointed out by the aborigines
to the next comers who invaded their territories. The length of time
that animals' bones might remain intact in the open air in Australia
is exemplified by the fact that in 1870, John Forrest found the skull
of a horse in one of Eyre's camps on the cliffs of the south coast
thirty years after it was left there by Eyre. Forrest carried the
skull to Adelaide. I argue, therefore, that if Leichhardt's animals
and equipment had not been buried by a flood, some remains must have
been since found, for it is impossible, if such things were above
ground that they could escape the lynx-like glances of Australian
aboriginals, whose wonderful visual powers are unsurpassed among
mankind. Everybody and everything must have been swallowed in a
cataclysm and buried deep and sure in the mud and slime of a flood.

The New South Wales Government made praiseworthy efforts to rescue the
missing traveller. About a year after Leichhardt visited Port
Essington, the Government abandoned the settlement, and the prevailing
opinion in the colony of New South Wal