lder than I, and succumbed to the sickness in nine days.

After the party had left for Canobie, I was completely prostrated, and
had no medicine on hand except Epsom salts. During the night we (the
cook, a new-chum Cockney, and myself) heard voices down at the
water-hole, which we took as from a party of travelling Chinamen. In
the morning we found that, some of the blacks who were implicated in the
murder had doubled back, and had taken away every article of iron they
could find, our camp oven included, and my clothes, which had just been
washed. This so preyed on my mind that when the party returned, they
found me delirious.

Mr. Carruthers, seeing the helpless state I was in, and the condition of
affairs generally, engaged Mr. Reg. Uhr to take charge on my behalf,
whilst he took me down to Burketown, distant 155 miles, in a cart, with
two horses. The road was almost deserted, and the blacks were very bad.
Carruthers would boil his billy at water-holes in the afternoon, and go
out to the centre of the plains to camp, with no bells on the horses. As
for myself, I was sick and weak. Not being able to eat damper or meat, I
was almost starved, lost all vitality, and cared little whether I
survived the trip or not. We had to cross the "Plains of Promise." These
consisted of an uninterrupted run of about 30 miles of devil-devil
country. It was a succession of small gutters and mounds, which, to a
sick man in a cart without springs, was intolerable. We arrived at
Burketown about November, 1866, and the public house was the only place
in which I could get accommodation. There I suffered all the nightly
noises incidental to a bush shanty.

Burketown at this time was an almost new settlement, with a population
of about 50 whites, but the number of graves of those who died within
its short life from fever was more than twice as many, and increasing
daily.

The Burketown fever was more virulent than any other I had hitherto or
since come in contact with, and was supposed to be a kind of yellow jack
fever, introduced by some vessel from Eastern countries.

The danger of a second introduction of the same, or perhaps worse,
epidemic does not appear in these days to be realised in Australia.

There was no doctor in the town, but a chemist named Peacock was
practising as one. Just as I arrived, Captain Cadell, in the old
"Eagle," arrived to send despatches of his explorations of the rivers on
the west coast of the Gulf of Carpen