d by Leichhardt, it was done upon his journey to Port
Essington in 1844, when he crossed and encamped upon the Flinders.
Mcintyre reported by telegraph to Melbourne that he had found traces
of Leichhardt, whereupon Baron von Mueller and a committee of ladies
in Melbourne raised a fund of nearly 4000 pounds, and an expedition
called "The Ladies' Leichhardt Search Expedition," whose noble object
was to trace and find some records or mementoes, if not the persons,
and discover the last resting-place of the unfortunate traveller and
his companions, was placed under McIntyre's command. About sixty
horses and sixteen camels were obtained for this attempt. The less
said about this splendid but ill-starred effort the better.
Indignation is a mild term to apply to our feelings towards the man
who caused the ruin of so generous an undertaking. Everything that its
promoters could do to ensure its success they did, and it deserved a
better fate, for a brilliant issue might have been obtained, if not by
the discovery of the lost explorers, at least by a geographical
result, as the whole of the western half of Australia lay unexplored
before it. The work, trouble, anxiety, and expense that Baron von
Mueller went through to start this expedition none but the initiated
can ever know. It was ruined before it even entered the field of its
labours, for, like Burke's and Wills's expedition, it was
unfortunately placed under the command of the wrong man. The collapse
of the expedition occurred in this wise. A certain doctor was
appointed surgeon and second in command, the party consisting of about
ten men, including two Afghans with the camels, and one young black
boy. Their encampment was now at a water-hole in the Paroo, where
Curlewis and McCulloch had been killed, in New South Wales. The
previous year McIntyre had visited a water-hole in the Cooper some
seventy-four or seventy-five miles from his camp on the Paroo, and now
ordered the whole of his heavily-laden beasts and all the men to start
for the distant spot. The few appliances they had for carrying water
soon became emptied. About the middle of the third day, upon arrival
at the wished-for relief, to their horror and surprise they found the
water-hole was dry--by no means an unusual thing in Australian travel.
The horses were already nearly dead; McIntyre, without attempting to
search either up or down the channel of the watercourse, immediately
ordered a retreat to the last water