gunyah as King had described it. There it was buried. On the
21st Burke's body was found up the creek; he too was at first buried
where he died. Howitt, after rewarding the blacks who had cared for King,
started back for Melbourne by easy stages. On his arrival there he was
sent back to disinter the remains of the dead; a task which he and Welch
safely accomplished, bringing the bodies down by way of Adelaide.

Dr. Becker, Stone, Purcell, and Patton were the others whose lives were
sacrificed on this expedition, so marked with disaster. These victims
received no token of public recognition of their fate, although a public
funeral was accorded to Burke and Wills, and a statue has been erected to
their memory in Melbourne.

[Illustration. The Burke and Wills Statue, Melbourne.]

The foolish and unaccountable oversight of Burke and his companions in
not marking a tree, or otherwise leaving some recognisable sign of their
return at the depot, seems to have led Brahe astray completely. He states
his side of the case as follows:--

"Mr. Burke's return being so soon after my departure caused the tracks of
his camels to correspond in the character of age exactly with our own
tracks. The remains of three separate fires led us to suppose that blacks
had been camped there...The ground above the cache was so perfectly
restored to the appearance it presented when I left it, that in the
absence of any fresh sign or mark of any description to be seen near, it
was impossible to suppose that it had been disturbed."

The story of the lost explorers created intense excitement throughout the
other colonies. Queensland, as the colony wherein the explorers were
supposed to have met with disaster, sent out two search parties. The
Victoria, a steam sloop, was sent up to the mouth of the Albert River in
the Gulf of Carpentaria, having on board William Landsborough, with
George Bourne as second in command, and a small and efficient party;
another Queensland expedition, under Fred Walker, left the furthest
station in the Rockhampton district; and from South Australia John
McKinlay started to traverse the continent on much the same line of route
as that taken by the unhappy men.

CHAPTER 15. THE RELIEF EXPEDITIONS AND ATTEMPTS TOWARDS PERTH.

15.1. JOHN MCKINLAY.

John McKinlay was born at Sandbank, on the Clyde, in 1819. He first came
to the colony of New South Wales in 1836, and joined his uncle, a
prosperous grazier, under whose g