Chinamen Invade the Russell River
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Wreck off the Brunswick
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Hinchinbrook in 1881
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Mount Lindesay
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Lost Leichhardt
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The Russell River Goldfield is a locality evidently
destined to immortality as the last spot on which the Chinaman
is to make his final and desperate stand for liberty to rake
auriferous gullies and wash out sandy bars.
There will the scene of the Mongolian Armageddon, where
the sole and sad survivors of the Queensland army of celestial
diggers are to strike their last blow for freedom and a grain
in the dish.
It seems impossible to exaggerate the importance of
this tremendous event in its mighty influence on the future
political history of this great colony.
The Rhadamanthine law, which is to be read for the
first time on the 16th of next month, and the stern
necessity for which is bringing our next Parliament
prematurely together with a wild patriotic rush, will have the
fatal effect of removing one of the standard national
grievances forming the yellow ladder by which so many amateur
politicians have climbed to the summit of election fame, to
fall off occasionally on the other side never to recover
again.
Many years ago, an Old Country comic paper, represented
two Irishmen discussing Gladstone, and one of them called for
a cheer for that redoubtable statesman. The other Hibernian
said, “A cheer for Gladstone is it? Be jabbers, and thrue
Oirish patriot ‘ud curse the name of ‘im! The devil the man
has done so much to deprive us of our grievances!”
The new Ministry would do well to pause and reflect on
the magnitude of the responsibility they undertake in
“depriving us of our grievances!”
The kanaka has either gone or is slowly vanishing on
the edge of the horizon. His departure is a death blow to that
numerous class of politicians to whom in the political game of
euchre the dusky son of the South Seas represented a “joker”
capable of securing at least one solitary trick.
And now the Chinese digger, the last surviving standard
grievance, is doomed to speedy annihilation and disappearance
from the sum of things! The subject is almost too mournful for
discussion.
From old records I find that in 1852, there were 300
Chinese on the Darling Downs, in charge of 450,000 sheep, and
in the Northern Districts of the State of New South Wales,
three millions of sheep in charge of 1200 Chinamen and
“exiles.”
In July, 1862, there were 281 Chinese landed at
Brisbane from the Lord Lyndhurst on their way to the Tooloom
and the Lachlan. Far back in the early days, old Dr. Land
suggested in the Legislative Council of New South Wales the
introduction of a thousand Chinese families to pioneer new
agricultural industries. Actuated by similar wisdom did other
philanthropists introduce Bathurst burr, sida retusa,
sparrows, and rabbits.
There appears to be no record of the first Chinaman who
landed on Australian soil. He may have drifted ashore on the
fragment of a wrecked junk, or landed at midnight as a
stowaway. Possibly he was an ignorant Celestial with no
colonial experience, and paid his passage with the erroneous
intention of being honest and living content with a moderate
price for assorted vegetables.
In Carlyle’s essay on the “Diamond Necklace,” there is
an imaginary speech by Cagliostro, to his :fellow scoundrels”
in the Bastille, a speech in which the Arch Quack said, “I
have been far north into frozen Muscovy, and south into hot
Calabria, east and west wherever the blue sky overarches
civilised man, yet out of Scoundreldom I never was!”
So I have been far North along the coast, from
Southport to where Cape Bedford dips into the Coral Sea, and
west to the plains of the Flinders, and the myall scrubs of
the Warrego, and was never out of sight of a Chinaman.
Old diggers were probably not far wrong in their belief
that 200 White men and Chinamen were killed by the Palmer
blacks. The epicurean myalls of that region were not long in
discovering that grilled Chinaman was equal to the choicest
bandicoot and far superior to wallaby.
The Chinese started to the diggings in bands of ten to
fifty, or a hundred, scattering at intervals on the march into
straggling bands. We picture one of these on the journey. Ten
Chinamen are entering a defile in the gloomy range of dark
weather-worn desert sandstone. Around them are blue and box
gums, ironbarks, and acacias, through whose green leaves
Aeolian winds play an “old and solemn harmony.” Dark forms
with savage faces, pitiless as death, remorseless as the
grave, crouch behind those sandstone boulders, behind those
gray old trees.
In each right hand is a black palm spear, in the other,
four or five more, to complete what the first began. There is
a wavy line in the grass where a startled wallaby flies fast
and far, and overhead a pair of white cockatoos look down from
a tall dry branch, and call alternately with harsh voices of
defiance and alarm.
A solitary bear crouches in the fork of a box gum, and
gazes sleepily with half-opened eyes, and icy unconcern at the
band of travellers passing underneath. The Chinese have
marched into the crescent of ambushing blacks! One tall savage
rises from behind a fragment of rock, and his palm spear is
driven clean through the heart of the Chinaman in the rear.
Far over the death cry of the victim rises that wild savage
war yell from a hundred throats, the murder breathing perfect
imitation of the cries of the black cockatoo, ending in a long
quaver produced by the back of the hand on the mouth. The
terror stricken Chinamen fling down their packs and huddle
together, or fly in all directions. Those who stay are
slaughtered where they stand; those who flee are overtaken in
a few years by the swift footed savage, and clubbed
mercilessly until their brains fall out, or speared. Tow or
three bodies are cut up and carried away to be roasted and
eaten that night by the bank of a stream in some lonely
ravine; the rest remain cold and silent in their blood. The
two cockatoos left with the first war cry, and only the bear
remained the sole spectator of that scene of death. He climbed
up to a higher branch and looked dubiously down, wide awake,
as the dread twin sisters, Silence and Darkness drew their
sable funeral pall gently and mercifully over the lonely dead.
Three years ago, there were 180 Chinamen fossicking in
the gullies on the head of the head of the Russell, just
outside the goldfield boundary. The Russell goldfield is
situated at the head of the Russell River, the centre about
six miles west from Bartle Frere (Chooriechillum), and about
2500 feet above the sea. Mr. Jack, the Government Geologist
believes that this field will “rise into pre-eminent
importance.”
The Chinese confined themselves to the streams and
gullies flowing from the ravines of Chooriechillum and the
basalt terraces of the range. The whole of this country is
covered by dense dark tropical jungle, extending from the edge
of the river to the tops of the highest mountains. The main
Chinese camp is on an old blacks’ bora ground called
“Teechappa,” about twenty three miles by road from the mouth
of the Russell River, and about fifty six miles from Cairns.
The Russell goldfield was first discovered by Christie
Palmerston when rambling through that country looking for a
railway route from Herberton to the coast. The Chinese scented
alluvial from afar off, and were there at an early stage. It
was not a complete Paradise for the black haired sons of the
Celestial Empire. A dark and yawning gulf separated the
European and Chinese digger. There is a strained relationship
that breaks on the slightest provocation. Not only did the
pioneer white digger decline with opprobrious terms to drink
out of the same pannikin, but he excited the wild sons of the
jungle with a similar objection to the Chinaman as a colleague
and companion.
The myall, however, had no objection to the long-tailed
digger as an article of diet. Chinamen a` la Chooriechillum, became a
standard dish at corrobborees.
When grilled, he was declared by the epicures of the
tribe to be equal to young cassowary, and much superior to the
tree-climbing kangaroo. Truly the way of Chinese transgressors
is hard. Some cynic was brave enough to say that the white
diggers were not in the habit of violently remonstrating with
the myalls against turning Chinamen into roast pork. And the
Chinese digger, in a fight with the wily myall in his native
jungle, was generally knocked clean out in the first round.
The Chinamen lived in daily and nightly terror of the “black
devils,” of the mountains.
So the Chinese loaded up their old Muskets with powder,
and a charge of gravel, and discharged volleys of musketry
into the night.
So the Chinamen blazed away all night while the myalls
were peacefully sleeping in innocent unconsciousness five
miles away, and exploded crackers until the earth shook, the
scrub hens ceased their midnight cackle, and the fugacious
wallaby fled terrified to the thickest part of the jungle.
Then, next morning they went cheerfully off on a
fossicking expedition up some lonely gully, guarded by one man
armed with a rifle not in a fit state to go off, and which
would probably kill nobody but the Chinaman if it did. The
sentry with this formidable artillery Saturday down to smoke
opium, and then quietly dozed off to sleep, trusting to the
others to rouse him if they saw any danger.
Around and over them towered the mighty jungle, the
giant trees interlaced by graceful vines, and festooned by
beautiful creepers. Dark forms steal stealthily from tree to
tree. The bare black feet make no sound upon the granite
rocks. Wild savage faces exchange significant glances, and
dark hands in eloquent gestures describe the plan of attack in
silence. At a given signal, a score of blacks converge swiftly
on one point not fifteen yards from the unsuspecting Chinamen.
The silence of the dark scrub is broken by a yell that
paralyses the doomed men with terror. The armed Chinaman
starts from slumber to be struck down by a shower of stones,
“too near and deadly aimed to err,” for these blacks are not
using their spears. The other two diggers are killed where
they stand on the sandbar, in the creek. This description will
also apply to the several of the considerable number of white
men killed on the Russell, beneath the shadow of
Chooriechillum.
The prompt and meritorious action of the Ministry
will not only prevent a Chinese invasion of the Russell
goldfield, but guard against an inevitable collision between
the two races, a collision from which very few Chinamen
would probably escape intact.
Captain W. H. Wyborn, late harbormaster, Brisbane,
kindly supplies me with the following authentic account of the
wonderful escape of two men who were washed ashore on the
coast near Byron Bay in a vessel which had capsized at sea.
The incident was referred to in a letter by Mr. A. Meston,
published in our issue of the 3rd instant:
In May
1849, the schooner, Swift, of 50 tons register, Captain
Tyrrell, left Brisbane for Sydney, with a cargo of tallow,
hides, and sheepskins, and having on board, besides a crew of
five men, Mr. Robert Gee, part owner, and one passenger; and,
shortly after leaving Moreton Bay she encountered a heavy
easterly gale.
I must here use Mr. Gee’s own words as he related the
case to me, “On Sunday morning at daylight, the vessel was a
little to the north of Cape Byron. I had been on deck the most
part of the night, and my clothes being wet through, and the
vessel making better weather, I went below to change them.
Just as I had taken off my trousers, the cook came down to get
some coffee for the men. The cabin being small, I lay down in
one of the berths to give him more room to move about, and
just as he was going up the companion, the vessel suddenly
turned over, bottom up, leaving me and the passenger below, as
we supposed, in a living tomb; the air, having no means of
escaping, kept the vessel afloat.
Some hours after – I could not guess the time –I felt
her masts touch the bottom. They were soon carried away, and
the vessel was thrown up on the beach. This must have been at
high tide, for the water shortly afterwards commenced to fall
in the vessel, and afterwards rose and fell with the tide. We
could tell day from night by the light coming up through the
companion. We thought of diving to get out, but felt too weak
to attempt it; and had we done so there was no chance of our
escaping, for the rails of the bulwarks were resting on the
sand. The cabin deck being a little above the water, we took
our turns of crawling up through the scuttle to get a little
sleep, there being only room for one; and at high water the
other had to stand with the water up to his armpits.
The air was now getting very bad, which increased our
misery, and we felt that our lives were nearly at an end. The
terrors of death had long passed, and we were waiting patiently to be
relieved of our sufferings, when to our surprise we heard a
thump on the outside of the vessel which we answered with a
rap. This was again and again repeated, showing that we were
discovered, which raised our spirits, giving us hope of being
released from our prison.
Some short time after heavy blows like the chopping of
an axe on the vessel’s bottom were heard, and we then knew we
were being cut out. No one can realize our feelings at that
moment unless he has been placed in a similar position. As
soon as we were taken out, we asked for a drink of water, when
one of the men ran to a waterhole a short distance off, took
off one of his boots, filled it, and brought us a drink, after
which my companion in misfortune asked me for a smoke. He had
not suffered as I had done, having all his clothes on when the
vessel had capsized. I was without trousers, and the things
that were floating about scratched my skin, and having been
nearly sixty hours in the salt water, those places had turned
to large sores.
I must now turn to the rescuers to state what brought
them to this lonely spot at this particular time. A few years
before this some cedar getters had camped on the banks of the
Brunswick River, and the heavy rains at that time had driven
them from their temporary scrub camps to their permanent one
near the mouth of the river.
The weather having cleared up on Thursday afternoon,
Beannard, a Frenchman, then master of a small vessel lying in
the river, being of a restless disposition, proposed to Boyd
to take a stroll along the beach to shoot some birds. They saw
on the beach what was at first taken to be a stranded whale;
but on approaching it they found it to be the hull of a vessel
bottom up. It being low water at this time, the beach on the
inside was dry out to where she was lying, and Boyd stamped
his foot on her, saying at the same time, “God have mercy on
the poor fellows that were in this vessel,” when to his
astonishment he heard a rap from the inside.
This convinced him that some of them were still in her,
and alive. He ran back to the ship and gave the alarm, when
the men all turned out with their axes, which had just been
ground ready for going back into the scrub again when the
weather cleared up. They very soon had a hole cut through the
vessel’s bottom and took the men out.
The passenger (I forget his name) went to Sydney in the
small vessel mentioned, but Gee remained there some weeks
before his sores were sufficiently healed for him to be
removed.
His nervous system was very much unhinged by this
disaster, and he dreaded taking a passage by sea again in a
sailing vessel.
An application was therefore made to the A.S.N.
Company, to allow the steamer Eagle, Captain Allen, to call
off the Brunswick River on one of her return trips from
Brisbane, which she did, and brought him onto Sydney.
But his constitution was very much shattered. Before
this, he was a strong, wiry, man, but he never recovered his
former health, and about five years after, was found dead in
his bed one morning as if quietly sleeping.
At the time of this occurrence, there were very few, if
any, permanent settlers on either the Brunswick or the Tweed,
they being mostly cedar-getters and migratory. At the time of
Mr. Meston’s visit, there may not have been any of them in
that locality who knew of the incident.
But Macgregor, from whom he got his information a few
years later, had sailed with me in the brig Palermo, of which
Gee was part owner, and he must have known him. But then he
might not have heard of this incident, for the excitement over
it at that time had died out.
Beannard, who, as I mentioned, was the cause of the
wreck being discovered and the men being cut out, was a
Frenchman, and yarns, when often repeated, seldom agree.
It is so in this case, a Frenchman being the cause of
the vessel being discovered, he got transformed into the two
that were out of her, as mentioned in Mr. Meston’s letter.
It is quite clear that the vessels were the same,
though he gives no name, where she was from, or where bound
to at the time that she capsized.
Mr. A. J. Tyson’s enthusiastic account of the ascent of
a mountain on Hinchinbrook, recalls some vivid memories of ten
days I spent on that famous island in 1881, on a copper
hunting expedition.
During that period, I ascended Mount Straoch, 3,000
feet, Mount Diamantina, 3,100 feet, Mount Bowen, 3,600 feet,
and Mount Burnett, about 2,000 feet, to say nothing of a score
of lesser peaks, for the whole island consists of steep
mountains, precipitous ravines, small tablelands, and little
valleys.
I wrote a brief account of the Hinchinbrook scenery in
that year for the Townsville “Herald”, of which I was then the
editor, and the Rev. Father Walsh, of Townsville, sent a copy
to Ireland in the “Freeman’s Journal,” which reprinted the
whole article.
Hinchinbrook is a large island, 22 miles long, and
sevento 12 miles wide, lying between the mouth of the Herbert
River and Rockingham Bay.
Between the island and the mainland is Hinchinbrook
Channel, through which small steamers pass from Dungeness to
Cardwell.
The name “Hinchinbrook” was first given to one of the
mountains on the island by Captain King, of the Mermaid, on
January 19, 1819, and the channel and island took their names
from the mountain. The south end is granite, and the north is
occupied chiefly by slates, quartz, and trachyte.
“From information received,” according to the police
formula, I proceeded to Hinchinbrook on a search for copper
supposed to exist there in large quantities. The first four
days were fine, the other six were devoted to an attempt to
break the rainfall record since the Deucalion Deluge.
All ravines, small and large, were hoarse with the roar
of waters, and white and mist covered with foam and spray.
Cataracts descended from the loftiest peaks, but nothing was
visible from the summits of the mountains. I was not even
certain what peaks I ascended. In going up Mount Diamantina, I
left all my clothes, and even my shoes, under a ledge of rock
with the black boy, and went up to the top in ordinary shower
bath costume. The cold brought me down in a hurry. Once I had
a brief glimpse of the sea, and the surf breaking on Bramble
Reefs, where the ill-fated Maria was wrecked on February 26,
1872, on the way to New Guinea; also Goold Island, where
Charley Clements and his mate were killed by the blacks, while
fishing, on January 17, 1872.
In a little nook in Ramsay’s Bay, while rain was
falling in torrents, I walked suddenly on to a camp of seven
blacks (three men and four gins), beside two small boys, whose
dismal howls were heard above the rain and the waves. The camp
was full of fish and crabs, and a heap of pounded nuts and
roots ready for hanging in dilly bags in running water to have
the poisonous principle washed out. The weapons were two big
painted shields, three fish spears, one wooden sword, and a
small tomahawk made out of a two-inch chisel.
The seven myalls, having no chance to run, remained
seated, made an heroic effort to appear delighted at our
appearance, and assured us by copious smiles and friendly
signs that our visit was indeed a pleasant and unexpected
treat. We accepted their invitation to dine, but my Townsville
blackboy, Calminda, was a wary warrior, and, pretending to
have no appetite, he stood carefully on guard, for the
Hinchinbrook blacks were not personally celebrated for
benevolence and hospitality to strangers. It may be as well to
mention also that Calminda was too frightened to eat anything,
but when leaving, he took up a roasted fish and two crabs in
an absent-minded manner, just for a sandwich on the journey.
The search for copper ended in discovering half a dozen
pieces of malachite, and prospecting for gold was not possible
in that weather. For scenery, no island on the Australian
coast can hope to rival Hinchinbrook, either in fair or stormy
days.
Mr. Tyson was evidently on the summit of Mount
Straoch, at a height of 3,000 to 3,160 feet, and probably
the first man there since my ascent 12 years ago. Other
ramblers would do well to follow his example and send a
record of their experiences to the Press.
Mr. A.
Meston writes:-
Sir,- Your
correspondent , Mr. R. M. Collins, whose letter I have read
with considerable interest, is evidently led into one or two
errors by knowing only a fragment of Cunningham’s report.
Cunningham, Captain Logan, and Fraser, the Colonial
Botanist, left South Brisbane on the 24th of July,
1828, and started for the Logan by way of Cowper’s Plains,
erroneously called “Cooper’s Plains,” named after Dr. Cowper,
the medical officer at the penal settlement.
They crossed the Logan where it is only a shallow
stream, over “Letitia’s Plain,” twenty seven miles from
Brisbane, past a big lagoon a quarter of a mile long on the
south side of the plain, and thence on along the valley of the
Logan to Mount Lindesay.
Captain Logan had been at the base of Mount Lindesay in
the previous year and failed to reach the top.
At three miles from the mountain, they were 935 feet
above the sea. From that point they crossed a lightly timbered
flat for two miles to the base of the first hill, then
ascended a ridge along the top of which they passed to a steep
ascent which brought them to the foot of the mount, presumably
somewhere about the present track to Unumgar.
Cunningham says the actual ascent began among large
masses of compound rock forming huge blocks and shelving slabs
of vast dimensions with luxuriant tufty plants in the
interstices. He turned back at an early stage of the ascent,
and Fraser and Logan went on.
In 1827, Logan had made the mistake of taking Mount
Lindesay or Mount Hooker, to be the Mount Warning of Cook,
unaware of the fact that those peaks are not visible from the
sea, and that Mount Warning was thirty miles away, east by
south.
Fraser turned back at the base of the cliffs, a point
said by Cunningham to be 4,000 feet above the sea, and came
back to camp very much very much bruised and exhausted.
Logan went on to the top and did not return for five
hours after Fraser. From the summit, he had a clear view of
all the surrounding country, including the Richmond River,
named in a previous year by Captain Rous, of H.M.S. Rainbow. A
ravine on the eastern base, bounded by vertical walls of
rugged rock, he called Glen Lyon. A lofty mountain north by
east he named Clanmorris, and a tall wooded peak ten miles
more to the north he called Mount Hughes, after Lieutenant
Hughes, of the Royal Staff Corps.
Cunningham, from the point at which he arrived, saw
five miles away a precipitous, rocky, inaccessible mountain,
which he called “Mount Hooker,” after the Regius Professor of
Botany at Glasgow University. He says he saw Mount Flinders
far to the north, and the sea was east-south-east. He gave the
latitude of the mountain as 28degrees 15minutes 21seconds
south, and longitude 152 degrees 45 minutes 45 seconds east.
He also said it was sixteen geographical miles west of the
meridian line of Brisbane, the azimuth variation of the needle
being 11 east.
Next day, Logan went away to find a road round the base
of Lindesay to the valley of the Richmond.
On the following day they started back, naming
“Wilson’s Peak,” “Minto Craigs,” “Knapp’s Peak,” and
“Dalhunty’s Plain.”
Mounts Shadforth and French had been named by Logan in
the previous year. At present I have not the time to give
details of that interestingly return journey. There is clearly
some mistake about the position and height of Mount Lindesay.
It appears that no height was taken by Messrs. Borchgrevink
and Brown, who, unfortunately, carried no aneroid, so we have
to fall back on Cunningham’s 5,703 feet. My present impression
is that this height is entirely wrong, there being apparently
no ascent to account for such an elevation. Just now, however,
we will not discuss that subject.
Logan got a clear view in all directions, and Mr.
Borchgrevink says he could see nothing from the summit.
Messrs. Prior and Pears had a magnificent view according to
the graceful account in the “Queenslander” of May, 1872, an
account which seems to me to have been written by a lady, and
one quite competent for the work. Am I right in my belief in
the fair correspondent?
My opinion is that Mount Hooker must be the bare rock
topped mountain overlooking Unumgar, and that the Clanmorris
of Logan is the Barney of today.
In 1869 or 1870 I ascended Mount Warning on the Tweed,
a mountain 3,400 feet high, called “Walloombin,” by the
blacks. Among those who had been there before me was the
present Curator of the Melbourne Botanic Gardens, W. R.
Guilfoyle, who stayed all night on the summit, and wrote a
graphic account of the sunrise for a Sydney illustrated paper.
The view from “Walloombin” is not likely to be ever forgotten.
Lindesay and Barney and Hooker were all clearly visible, and I
readily recognised all three in 1874 when passing between
them.
It is interestingly to learn that Walter Hill, late
Curator of our Botanic Gardens, a man who made many valuable
contributions to the flora of Queensland, was collecting in
the vicinity of Mount Lindesay previous to 1868, and found
there, among other specimens, a new filmy fern, Hymenophyllum
tunbridgeense, and Cyathea Lindesayana, a tree fern and first
true Cyathea found up to that time in Australia. They were
named by Hooker.
When Dr. Lang passed Mount Lindesay in the 1850s, he
stayed a night at Unumgar, then “Glennies’s station, Unumga,”
and heard there two blackfellows had been on top, but that a
bushfire had subsequently made the mountain inaccessible.
In a week or two, I shall visit Mount Lindesay
accompanied by Mr. Bailey, our Colonial Botanist, and settle
the question of locality and also the height of Lindesay,
Barney, Hooker, and Knapp’s Peak by ascending all four if
possible.
REPRODUCED FORM THE QUEENSLANDER’S
CHRISTMAS SUPPLEMENT
In the following article the reader will find notice
only a reliable though necessarily brief account of Leichhardt
and his three expeditions but also interestingly facts never
hitherto published in any history of that remarkable man.
In the noble band of Australian explorers there is not
one whose memory is stained by any action dishonorable to
himself or discreditable to the nation. If the actions of all
were not characterized by wisdom, they have never been
overshadowed in a doubt of their integrity or the purity of
their intentions. They rise and stand before us unsullied from
out the misty silence of the vanished years.
The careful and cautious Gregory brothers;
much-enduring marvelous Eyre; proud, methodical Mitchell;
indefatigable Sturt; gallant, unfortunate Kennedy; watchful,
adventurous Stuart; solemnly resolute Landsborough; dashing
Walker; enthusiastic, fatally incautious, Leichhardt; and
wild, headlong, fatally unwise, Burke.
The Hon. A. C. Gregory, one of the most useful of
Australian explorers, still lives in Brisbane, and can be seen
during the session driving down to take his seat in the
Legislative Council. This gallant veteran’s explorations
extended over the years 1846, 1848, 1853, 1856, 1857, 1858,
1859 and 1861.
In the year 1858, he led one of the expeditions in
search of Leichhardt. This will be referred to further on. Our
present genial Minister for Mines, the Hon. W. O. Hodgkinson,
was a member of the Burke and Wills expedition in 1861. The
leader’s fatal mistake of dividing his party left W. O.
Hodgkinson with Wright’s detachment, and so deprived him of
the honour of being one of the first men to cross the
Australian continent. He crossed Australia afterwards in 1862
as second in command to McKinlay’s party.
He was the man who rode with urgent dispatches to
Melbourne from Menindie and back in twenty days, a distance of
1,000 miles. Had Hodgkinson been the leader instead of Wright,
the Burke and Wills tragedy would never have happened. That is
also the opinion of Howitt and other writers on Australian
exploration. These two men are now among the few living
representatives of the old explorers, the connecting links
between us and the past.
When Camille Desmoulins stood arraigned before the
Revolutionary Committee and the judgment bar of
Fouquier-Tinville, he replied, in answer to the question of
his age, “I am the same age as the bon sans-culotte Jesus, an
age fatal to revolutionists.” The year 1848 was a year fatal
to Australian explorers. It was the year of Kennedy’s
disastrous expedition along the Cape York Peninsula; the year
also in which Leichhardt and all his party vanished utterly
into oblivion. These are the two most terribly tragic events
in Australian exploration. The Burke and Wills tragedy left at
least the skeletons of the two leaders and the site of Grey’s
burial place. Two men and the blackfellow “Jacky” were all who
returned alive out of the eleven who landed with Kennedy from
the schooner, Tam O’Shanter, on the shore of Kennedy Bay, on
the 24th of May, 1848, under the guns of H.M.S.
Rattlesnake. And that same, poor, untutored savage, “Jacky
Jacky,” is one of the most pathetic and beautifully heroic
characters in Australian annals. For his sake alone the entire
Australian aboriginal race is entitled to a share of our
national regard.
Leichhardt’s whole party, men and animals, disappeared
from the face of the earth, leaving neither a token nor a trace
of either the time or the locality of the last death scene.
The narrative of Jacky describes Kennedy’s last
moments. We see the noble savage drawing forth the fatal
spear, and bending with tears over the body of his dead
master. But no human voice was left to tell us when and where
and how Johann Ludwig Leichhardt started on his lone journey
to the pale kingdoms of Dis. Sad, unutterably sad!
Little is known of the early history of Leichhardt, nor
was much information given by the female relative who
considered herself entitled, by virtue of relationship, to the
reward which would doubtless have been given to Leichhardt had
he succeeded in his last journey, or at least to a further
grant for State Services on his first expedition.
He was a German physician of considerable scientific
attainments. He possessed an extensive knowledge of economic
botany and considerable information on general geology.
In August, 1846, on the 18th and 25th
of the month, he delivered two lectures in Sydney on the
results of his journey to Port Essington. These two lectures
were published in a pamphlet now extremely rare, and have
never been republished since.
Leichhardt was in Queensland for two years before he
projected any extensive scheme of exploration. He rode here
overland from Newcastle. He was collecting specimens from
around Brisbane, and from Ipswich to the darling Downs in 1843
and 1844. He was at German Station with the German
missionaries in June, 1843; Bigge’s Station, Grandchester,
November 1843; and Canning Dows, near Warwick, 27th
March 1844. An old Ipswich citizen tells me he saw him in
Ipswich in 1843, a ‘thin, spare man, with a long, serious,
face.’ Physically he was not a strongman, nor did his face and
figure indicate a capacity for much endurance. His spirit was
strong, far stronger than the body, a combination common
enough among all grades of human genius. In his journey to
Port Essington, he was subjected to no severe ordeal, having
abundance of food and water, and a fair season from start to
finish. In eight months, they had only three day’s rain. He
was ill during nearly the whole of his second journey, and
when starting from McPherson’s station, on the Cogoon, in
April, 1848, was suffering from palpitations of the heart.
Leichhardt was not a leader of men. He possessed hardly one of
the qualifications of leader. Any competent Australian bushman
reading his account of his journey to Port Essington would see
clearly enough that the first time he met with serious
troubles, he would involve himself and party in disaster.
It would be difficult to find two men of strong
individualism more unqualified for leadership than Leichhardt
and Robert O’Hara Burke. We have no record to show if Burke
ever said a foolish thing, but he certainly never did a wise
one, from the start at Melbourne to the last scene on Cooper’s
Creek.
Both men led their parties into misery and death.
Burke’s succession of blunders really seemed to arise out of
an infatuation based on a blind, unreasoning fatalism. He
started with an expedition that could have made a picnic
excursion of a journey across the continent, and it ended with
the death of six men, and a meager geographical result from a
flying trip which Hewitt appropriately describes as an ‘act of
splendid insanity.’
Leichhardt’s suicidal want of caution when surrounded
by hostile blacks caused the cruel death of Gilbert, the
botanist, and serious injury to two other men.
Had the brothers Gregory, Sturt, Stuart, Landsborough,
and Walker, acted with the same want of ordinary precaution,
they and all their men would certainly have been exterminated.
There was no other resemblance between Burke and Leichhardt
except their incapacity for leadership.
The journey to Port Essington was beyond question, a
splendid achievement; but from Jimbour station on the Darling
Downs to the northwest ocean, Leichhardt had an unbroken
series of advantages such as never favoured any Australian
explorer before nor since. There was an abundance of grass and
water for his stock and party, plenty of game for the camp,
and fine weather nearly the whole journey. They had to face
none of the miseries and dangers of Sturt, Eyre, and Stuart,
nor any of the difficulties encountered and overcome by the
careful, calculating Gregory.
The scientific man of an expedition ought never to be
the leader. The leader should be leader only and nothing else.
Emin Pasha thought more of a new bird or a new beetle than the
discipline of his soldiers or the condition of the state. Had
Stanley been an Emin, he would never have come back from
Albert Nyanza, and probably never have got there at all. The
scientist is usually an enthusiast with one grand planetary
idea which makes science the central sun round which it for
ever revolves in a fixed orbit. He, too, on an expedition, in
justice to himself, ought to have no other responsibility
whatever. Leichhardt was a specially valuable man as the
scientist of a party, but as leader he was a mournful failure.
He possessed neither the natural nor the acquired
qualifications. He neither ruled his men by fear nor endeared
them to him by love. Like most scientists, he lived wrapped up
in cold selfish isolation, a condition more or less essential
to science, but fatal to a leader of men. He possessed no
strong human sympathies. He never anywhere writes of any of
his party with a kind generous feeling. He expresses no sorrow
or regret for the criminal negligence which caused the death
of Gilbert, and the physical torture of Calvert and Roper. His
journal shows that he inspired neither his white men nor his
blackboys with fear or respect. They regarded him with a
feeling utterly subversive of discipline and the mutual
harmony which ought to bind a leader and his men together. Not
one of his first party went out on his second trip, and not
one of his second party except ‘Womai’ joined his third
expedition.
When John Mann and Hovenden Hely arrived in Brisbane on
12th August, 1847, both very ill from fever, they
expressed opinions in no sense complimentary to the leader of
the expedition.
In 1878 old John Campbell, of Redbank, wrote: “I well
recollect the surprise when one evening Messrs. Hely and manna
walked into the Queen’s Arms Hotel in Ipswich upon their
unexpected return, and at the way they abused Leichhardt,
calling him anything but a gentleman. Among other things they
asserted that if any game was shot – such as a duck, or even a
pigeon – it must first be brought to him, and he generally
appropriated it to his own use, leaving those who shot it to
go without. They also accused him of camping at a short
distance from the rest of the party in an exclusive manner and
not talking over the events of the day, nor of the route to be
pursued on the morrow. And finally they declared that he was
no bushman, but merely a good navigator, who could find his
way by quadrant and compass only, and that he was a martinet,
and an extremely disagreeable companion.
The reader must not deem me uncharitable in writing in
this strain. My object is to give a correct picture of a
celebrated man whose
name must for ever be honourably associated with Australian
history. My first chapters are dealing exclusively with cold
facts. The sentiment is left for the conclusion. There was
enough foolish, unreasoning sentiment wasted over O’Hara Burke
to have give a full share to all the explorers of the
nineteenth century. The shadowy atmosphere of romance in which
Burke expanded to such sublime proportions was rudely
dispelled by Howitt and Favenc.
I have now to paint Leichhardt in more attractive
colours.
As a scientist, he commands our admiration. Very little
escaped notice within the range of that ever watchful eye. He
collected intensely interestingly information on the flora and
fauna seen along the journey to Port Essington. Much of that
information was embodied in lectures delivered in Sydney on
the 18th and 25th August 1856. These
lectures were revised and published in a pamphlet by Mr. A.
Baker, of King Street, a publication unfortunately so rare
that I was able to obtain or hear of only one copy. Both
lectures appeared in the Sydney Herald, and parts were
republished in the Moreton Bay Courier of 1846.
He described all the roots, seeds, fruits, and
vegetables used as food on the journey. His knowledge of
botany enabled him to ascertain to what species the plant
belonged, and the properties of those to which they were
allied in other parts of the world. His botanical skill
supplied his party and himself with a variety of vegetable
food unknown to all other explorers. He was not sentimentally
fastidious in his diet, and ate all available animal food,
from tree grubs to snakes, to kangaroos and flying foxes. Fat
foxes were a favourite dish. He appeared to posses what Josh
Billings regarded as the supreme blessing of any man in this
world, ‘a good reliable set of bowels.’
The book of nature was ever before him with an open
page, and, like Manfred, ‘he dived in his lone wanderings to
the cave of Death, searching for causes and effect; and drew
from withered bones and skulls and heaped up shells,
conclusions most forbidden.’
The dead crabs and turtles and mussel shells far out on
the box gum flats of the Gulf, groves of dead trees and heaps
of shells, overgrown by four or five years growth, spoke
eloquently of long droughts and the receding ocean. He saw
buffaloes for the first time on the East Alligator River,
wandering descendants of the old Raffles Bay stock.
He met blacks with beautiful rock crystals, but no gold
or gems. Strange that the rock crystal has been an object of
veneration to so many tribes of Australian blacks.
The student of Occultism, or the alchemist who passed
the nights of years in sciences untaught, save in the olden
time, may seek to solve in vain, this mystery of the wild
myalls’ magic talisman! I have seen these rock crystals
carried under the arm, worn around the neck, hidden in the
hair, or suspended in small bags with a band round the
forehead. But this subject must stand aside.
In the maps prepared by Leichhardt in 1847, we have
proofs of his careful and accurate observation. He records the
physical features of the country along the entire route, the
geology, the fauna, the flora, the temperature, and specially
interestingly incidents of travel. His few unimportant
geographical errors may seem absurd to men who traverse modern
mapped out Queensland in buggies or railways, but they were
only trifling spots on the great sun of the man who travelled
in 1845 for 3000 miles across wild, unknown country, never
before trodden by the foot or seen by the eye of civilised
man.
He left Sydney in the steamer Sovereign, afterwards
wrecked at the South Passage, with the loss of forty-four
people, on the 13th August, 1844, bringing James
Calvert, John Roper, John Murphy (a boy 10 years of age), a
ticket of leave man named “Bill Phillips,” and Harry Browne, a
Newcastle aboriginal. The Sovereign occupied a week on the
journey, a little more than is required by the clipper
steamers of today.
Before leaving the Downs, the party was increased by
Pemberton Hodgson; Mr. Gilbert, a naturalist who had been with
Gould; Caleb, an American Negro; and “Charley,” a Bathurst
aboriginal.
There was not one competent bushman in the whole
expedition. The instruments were represented by a sextant and
an artificial horizon, a chronometer, Kater’s compass, and
small thermometer. He also carried Arrowsmith’s map of New
Holland. Among the provisions were 1200lb of flour, 200lb of
sugar, 80lb of tea, and 20lb of gelatine. They took 30lb of
powder and eight bags of shot, chiefly Nos 4 and 6. Those were
the days of muzzleloaders. He estimated the time at seven
months, whereas the journey occupied fourteen months and a
half.
They left Jimbour, then called ‘Jimba,” on the 1st
of October, 1844, and “launched buoyant with hope into the
wilderness of Australia.”
On the 17th, “Charley” threatened to shoot
Gilbert, and was in a state of insubordination. He was
dismissed in the morning and pardoned in the evening. They
were all poor sportsmen, and, like Burke and Wills and King,
would have starved in the midst of plenty.
On the 3rd of November he decided to reduce
his party, and Caleb and Hodgson returned to the Darling
Downs.
On the 6th of November, they crossed the
Dawson, named after R. Dawson, of the Hunter River.
On the 7th an old man kangaroo killed two of
the dogs.
On the 14th he named the Gilbert Range after
the naturalist, and Lynd’s Range after Robert Lynd.
They passed waterholes full of jewfish and eels, and
swamps covered with plovers and ducks. They ate iguanas,
‘possums, shellfish, and all manner of birds.
On the 27th Leichhardt named the Expedition
Range, Mount Nicholson, after Dr. Nicholson M.L.C., of Sydney,
and Aldis Peak after a Mr. Aldis of Sydney. On the 28th
he named the Boyd River after Benjamin Boyd, the first man to
introduce kanakas to New South Wales in 1846.
On the 5th of December, he had named Zamia
Creek and “Bigges’s Mountain,” after Bigges the squatter at
the present Grandchester.
On the 7th one of the horses was speared by
the blacks. On the 29th he named the Comet River,
from a comet visible on that date. On the 31st they
saw they saw the remains of a camp, evidently made by white
men, with a ridge pole and two forks cut by a sharp axe. Who
were these lonely strangers? And whence and whither? No answer
from the eternal silences. One native seen that day looked
like a half caste. On the 10th of January, he
reached the Mackenzie, called after Sir Evan Mackenzie.
The blacks, so far, were either friendly, or declined
communication. His attempts to understand the natives were a
failure. He was nearly always wrong in his conclusions. He
says, “The Mackenzie blacks called water ‘yarrai,’ the same as
on the Downs,” whereas water on the Downs is “goong,” and
“gamoo,” and “coomoo,” on the Mackenzie and Dawson. The scared
old gin on a treetop was not alluding to water when she said,
“Yarrai-yah,” but simply telling him laconically to clear out.
He says, “The hunting nets were made from the bark of the
Cooramin tree,” whereas Cooramin is the word for kangaroo, the
animal caught by the nets. Sir Thomas Mitchell was equally
unfortunate in confusing the information received from the
blacks.
And so the explorers journey on to the Burdekin,
following that river past the Valley of Lagoons, away up to
the head waters; crossed the Dividing Range on to the Lynd,
followed that river down to the Mitchell, along the Mitchell
until near the coast; then doubled back on the 25th
June, and came down the shores of the Gulf, touching the coast
a little north of the Staaten River, thence skirting the Gulf
away across all the rivers to within sight of the sea near the
mouth of the Limmen Bight River, and thence he travelled
westward across the Peninsula to the settlement at Port
Essington, where they arrived on the 17th of
December, 1845.
They were kindly received by the Commandant, Captain
McArthur, and, after recruiting there for some weeks, started
with Captain McKenzie in the schooner Heroine and arrived in
Sydney on the 29th of March, 1846.
Of the party who had started from Jimbour one man never
returned. This man was Gilbert, the naturalist, a pupil of the
famous Gould. Poor Gilbert lies in his lonely grave by the
side of a lagoon on a box tree flat on the Nassau, the victim
of a leader’s want of caution criminal in its astounding
stupidity. On the night of the 28th of June, 1845,
the party camped by a lagoon on the Nassau in latitude 15
degrees 45 minutes. They were at that time surrounded by
hostile dangerous blacks. Yet no watch was kept. They camped
in tents far apart, Phillips actually on the opposite side of
the lagoon, and all went serenely off to sleep, leaving even
the fires burning brightly to mark their position to the
blacks. A shower of spears and a chorus of fearful yells woke
them up to find that their guns had no caps on, and the whole
party only escaped total destruction in a manner little short
of miraculous. Calvert and Roper were pierced by several
spears and extremely bruised by nullas. A fine pointed spear
had been driven through Gilbert’s heart, killing him dead on
the spot.
After this, Leichhardt “took every precaution to
prevent another surprise!” They had so far been rambling
through wild, unknown country and wild, unknown, savages with
the unsuspicious confiding simplicity of a band of children.
Leichhardt and party landed at Sydney on the 29th
of March, 1846, greatly to the astonishment and much to the
delight of the general public, who had come to regard them as
the “lost explorers.”
Leichhardt and his men were either swept away by
floods, dead from starvation, perished from thirst, murdered
by blacks, or were hopelessly lost in some “wild, weird clime,
lying sublime, out of Space and out of Time.”
Pathetic articles and mournful paragraphs beveled the
fate of the doomed men, and amateur poets added new and
appalling terrors to death. Chief of the frenzied bards who
burst forth prematurely into sombre epithetic verse was Robert
Lynd, whose name Leichhardt had bestowed on the tributary of
the Mitchell. His
poem, expressing a sad desire for someone to “pluck a leaf on
Leichhardt’s tomb,” is printed in Dr. Lang’s “Queensland.”
Much more useful to Leichhardt than the applause of the
crowd and the paeans of enthusiastic poets was a grant of
£1000 from the Legislative Council and a sum of £1518 18s 6d
subscribed by the general public. From the last amount,
Leichhardt received a share of £854, and from the State grant
£660; Calvert and Roper getting each £125; Murphy £70;
Phillips £80 and a free pardon, and the two blacks £25 each.
The £854 was presented to Leichhardt in the Sydney School of
Arts by the President of the Council on the 21st of
September, 1846. He thus received personally a total sum of
£1454.
After a few months sojourn in Sydney, where he was
treated to the most generous hospitality, Leichhardt prepared
for his second expedition.
Particulars of this trip were written two years ago by
John F. Mann, a member of Leichhardt’s party. This hale and
hearty old gentleman is still living, and resides at Neutral
bay, Sydney. It appears that Mann’s very clear and
interestingly narrative was unknown to Ernest Favenc when
writing his excellent “History of Australian Exploration,” so
the general reader will meet here for the first time an
outline of that second expedition of which so little has
hitherto been known. Leichhardt’s intention was to cross the
continent from east to west. His natural timidity is clearly
apparent in the course he intended to take. At the end of one
of the lectures delivered in Sydney in August, 1846, he then
announced his future intentions:-
“I shall
proceed at once to latitude 23 degrees where I found the
Mackenzie and Peak Range during my last journey, and as the
Mackenzie was well supplied with water, shall follow it up to
its sources, probably 80 or 100 miles west of where we struck
the river. I might then find out if the western branches of
the supposed watershed go south to join the Darling or turn
north as the sources of the great rivers of the Gulf. In the
last case, if there were sufficient water I would go west and
try to reach the northwest coast. If there were no water to go
west or north I would return down the Mackenzie and follow my
first journey up to the junction of the Clarke and Burdekin in
latitude 19 degrees 12 minutes. I would follow the Clarke and
doubtless easily find the head of the Flinders after crossing a
tableland or dividing range. I would then go on to the Albert
and follow it up to find the latitude of its source and nature
of country. Then I would try a westerly course to the heads of
the Nicholson, Van Alphen, Abel Tasman, Robinson, and
Macarthur, and from the latter river would hope to reach the
waters of the west coast in about 17 degrees 18 minutes.
Should I succeed, I shall turn south parallel to the northwest
and west coast until I reach Swan River. This journey I hope
to complete in two years.”
In stead of reaching the opposite end of the triangle
by traversing the base he intended to pursue an erratic course
up one side and down the other, with a series of curves and
various geodetic eccentricities thrown in to break the
monotony of the journey.
On the night of 30th September, 1846, Dr.
Leichhardt, Hovenden Hely, and Daniel Bunce left Sydney for
Raymond Terrace on the H.R.S. Company’s steamer, Thistle.
On the following day, Perry, Boecking, and Meyer left
by the Cornubia.
On the 15th of October, J. B. Mann left for
Brisbane by the Tamar in charge of the heavy luggage, and to
pick up ten head of cattle presented out of the Government
heard at Redbank. He wisely sold these cattle, bought others
on the Downs at the same price, and saved roving and risk. All
the stores went to Ipswich in the Experiment (Pearce owner),
the first steamer that ever ran on the Brisbane River.
On the 6th of November he went to Ipswich
with J. Bowie Wilson, McConnell, and Gideon Scott, dining on
the way with Dr. Simpson, C.L. Commissioner. At Ipswich he got
a letter from Leichhardt at Eton Vale, telling him to see
Major North about certain horses and to get some rhubarb and
magnesia. Mann says that Dr. Dorsey kindly supplied him with
all the medicines he could spare.
In the Maitland “Mercury” of 1846, I find that
Leichhardt’s party were in Stroud on the 8th of
October preparing to start. All wore red shirts and cabbage
tree hats, and were daily expecting the doctor from “Tahlee.”
They had twelve horses and fifteen mules , twelve of which
were obtained from the A. A. Company, one was presented by
Wentworth, and two by H. H. McArthur, besides 270 goats
purchased from Wentworth, of Windemere. The horses came from
King’s Irrawang station.
When the whole party were finally together at Oakey
Creek, they possessed fourteen horses, sixteen mules, 270
goats, 100 sheep, four dogs, and forty head of cattle. That
was certainly a lively procession to face the flooded rivers
and mulga and brigalow scrubs of the West! Leichhardt less
resembled an Australian explorer than one of the Hyskos or
Shepherd Kings driven forth by tribal wars to stock and
populate a new territory. They carried ½ a ton of flour, 200lb
of tea, 200lb of tea, 200lb of salt, 50lb of powder, 200lb of
shot, six bars of soap, and 20lb of gelatine and tapioca.
Their weapons included eight guns and two swords. For camping
they had only two 8 x 6 tents. The mules were a source of
trouble from the start. These cantankerous animals, when not
engaged exercising their hind legs in kicking holes in the
atmosphere, were distributing their loads impartially over the
surface of the surrounding territory.
On the 6th of December, they all arrived at
Jimbour. Next day the unwieldy cavalcade departed on that
disastrous journey second only in Australian annals to the
Burke and Wills expedition for the general misery and dismal
failure arising out of the suicidal incompetence of the
leadership, and insane mismanagement.
People disposed to regard Leichhardt as a hero of a
sublime type will do well to avoid reading Mann’s narrative.
They will emulate the antiquarian who declined to scour his
ancient shield for fear it might prove to be a pot lid, or the
amateur astronomer who refused to risk his faith in Aristotle
by gazing through a telescope.
Macaulay, in his essay on Bacon, says the life of the
noblest man is too often a perpetual conflict between lofty
aspirations and mean desires. If there were noble traits in
Leichhardt they are not discernible either in his own journals
or those of Mann or Bunce, who were his companions on that
melancholy expedition. Mann’s account of the journey was
written as a painful duty to himself and his comrades.
Leichhardt on his return to the Downs stated in a published
letter to Lieutenant Lynd that “on this journey my companions
behaved remarkably well.” But he wrote to his brother in law
in Germany on the 20th of October 1847, attributing
all the disasters of the trip to the bad conduct of his
companions, and alluding to them all in most ungenerous terms.
That letter was, of course, not intended for publication, but
it appeared in the Sydney “Herald” of the 24th of
January 1866.
Then Mr. Mann, “for the sake of his children and
himself and the memory of his former companions, published a
true version of the journey, as brief as possible.”
The journal of Bunce, a botanical collector in the
party, had been published long before, and it agrees entirely
with Mann’s account. Mann himself writes more in sorrow than
in anger, apparently somewhat humiliated by the “bitter
constraint and sad occasion” which makes his painful
revelations a necessity. There is no reason whatever to doubt
the absolute sincerity and integrity of Mr. Mann’s account of
the expedition and his allusions to Leichhardt’s
peculiarities.
They started along Leichhardt’s first track towards the
Comet and the Peak Range, intending to go thence towards the
west coast of Australia. The party included Hovenden Hely,
James Perry, a saddler; Boecking, a German tanner and baker;
Daniel Bunce, botanical collector; Turnbull, from the A. A.
Company, and Brown and Wammai, two blacks from Newcastle and
Port Stephens.
On this trip, Leichhardt resembled “some unhappy master
whom unmerciful disaster followed fast and followed faster,”
until there was no prospect of escape. On Charley’s Creek,
they were detained twenty-five days recovering their stock
scattered in a night panic caused by Leichhardt walking
through them to “accustom them to his presence.”
Hely came into camp on the 13th from
Drayton, then called the “Springs” (myall ‘Moyumneura’), with
the mails and letters.
Reaching the Dawson, they found that river and its
tributaries flooded, and the country very soft. One of the
mules kicked the doctor in the stomach. Colds, face-ache, and
influenza, were prevalent. The mules were one prolonged
calamity. The atmosphere was thick with sandflies and
mosquitoes. The doctor was usually in a frantic rage with the
mules, or the goats, or some of his party. When his men were
sick he had no physic. He told them at the start that he had a
complete medicine chest, and a set of surgical instruments.
Both statements were untrue. He had no ointment, bandages,
physic, lint or plaster of any sort, and his “instruments
consisted of a knife for skinning birds and a bullet mould for
drawing teeth.” He had actually induced those who had medicine
to leave them behind at the stations! This criminal neglect
entailed incalculable suffering on the whole party. He would
not even kill the sheep or cattle to supply proper food, but
kept them on lean, tough, goat meat. They were delayed for
weeks camped by the flooded Mackenzie, and all were miserably
ill with fever and ague. The doctor was very despondent in his
illness, but said that he “would die in Australia for
Australia.” He had none of the calm defiance of pain and death
shown by brave, mad, Burke. He made undignified attempts to
obtain an unfair share of the food, and went stealthily away
on three successive mornings and ate all the mustard cress
grown for the invalids. He said, “They must look after
themselves!” They were then not able to walk. He displayed the
most cold blooded, disregard of his people’s illness and
sufferings, and actually at night two of his party caught him
walking away from the reserve provisions with an old neck
scarf full of sugar, which he said agreed with him, but would
turn sour on the stomachs of the sick men!
It is truly a painful and humiliating story. There is
an unpleasant episode told of Sturt’s action with regard to
6lb of sugar when exploring on the Murray. Sugar seems to have
been the Paradise apple to the Adams of exploration.
On the 19th of April they sighted the Peak
Range. All the sheep and goats (230) had been abandoned in the
Mackenzie scrubs, and some of the mules, horses, and cattle,
were lost. On the 5th of May, they camped close to
the Peaks. [The Comet blacks called these peaks “Babboola,”
and Table Mountain “Wingganna.”]
Weeks of valuable time were foolishly wasted here in
hunting for stray mules and cattle. Five of these mules
actually went back for 600 miles to the Darling Downs, clearly
making for Port Stephens. Hely and Brown were once out for
eleven days, and again out for nine days. The weather was
cold, the thermometer even falling to 25 degrees (F); they had
a wretched camp, and were all sick. Their flour and sugar were
done, and much of the meat was more or less putrid. Their
lives were probably saved by the game that they shot. On the
21st of June, they started to return to the Darling
Downs, and, on the 24th of July, after a miserable
journey – in which the thermometer once fell to 18 degrees
[Fahrenheit] – arrived, all half dead from sickness at
Jimbour, where they were hospitably received by Mr. Joshua
Peter Bell (the late Sir Joshua). There was a decidedly
strained relationship between the doctor and his companions,
not one of whom entertained towards him any friendly feeling.
On the 3rd of August, Hely and Mann left for
Brisbane, arriving on the 7th of August at Ipswich,
where Mann remained for a few days with Dr. Dorsay. In
Brisbane they were entertained by Gordon Sandeman, Pierce, and
others, with a supper at Bow’s Hotel.
On the 9th of August, Leichhardt started
away west for Fitzroy Downs, to connect his surveys with those
of Mitchell. He was accompanied by F. N. Isaacs, Bunce, Perry,
and a blackboy. That journey was also a failure. After
returning to the Downs, he started for Brisbane and arrived on
Monday the 4th of October 1847, and left on
Wednesday by steamer for Sydney.
The following graphic and interestingly description of
Leichhardt is given by J. B. Mann, who for a period of eight
months, had the best possible opportunities of observing his
appearance and general disposition- “In appearance Leichhardt
possessed a commanding presence, being a little over 6ft in
height. He was by no means the strong man which those who knew
him only in Sydney supposed him to be. All tendency to
robustness vanished soon after we commenced our journey. I was
much surprised to notice his slightly built frame and absence
of muscular development. His head was well shaped with high
intellectual forehead, small grey intelligent eyes, dark brown
hair; the lower part of his face was hidden in a bushy beard
and moustache; nose slightly aquiline. A few months in his
company were sufficient to convince one that he was a man of
more than ordinary intellect. His conversation was most
fascinating; a thorough English scholar, writing and
conversing most fluently in that language; his slight foreign
accent, I suppose, added to his charm. He stood high in the
estimation of those who were competent to form an opinion of
his talents. As a leader he was wholly unsuited for such a
responsible position, being deficient in almost every
requirement for such a responsible post. He possessed neither
patience, temper nor ingenuity; the organ of locality was
apparently absent, as well as any mechanical conception. He
really had no taste for drawing, nor could he distinguish one
picture from another any more than he could distinguish one
tune from another. He did not like music, there were only two
tunes he cared to listen to. It was difficult to make out what
religion he possessed. He certainly was not a Christian. He
might have been a Unitarian. Judging from more circumstances
than one, I judge him to be a Jew. Boecking, his countryman, a
most intelligent, well informed man, was of the same opinion.
It was suggested to him by one of our party that prayers
should be read every Sunday. His reply was, ‘I do not care for
those things myself, but if you choose to have them among
yourselves, I have no objection.”
And now we come to the last journey, in which
Leichhardt unexpectedly fulfilled his Peak Downs ambition of
“dying in Australia for Australia.” His companions on this
fatal expedition were Henzig Classon, Donald Stuart, Kelly,
“Womai” and “Billy.”
Donald Stuart had been for some time with Leslie at
Canning Downs. The blackboy “Womai,” was the Womai of his
second trip.
The party came overland from the Hunter with the mules
and the horses, and Leichhardt came from the Downs to Brisbane
to get thirty fat bullocks from Redbank, presented by Sir
Charles Fitzroy.
He left Brisbane on Wednesday, 16th February
1848. They started from the Downs with fifty bullocks, twenty
mules, and six horses; besides 800lb of flour, 150lb of tea;
100lb of salt; 250lb of shot; 40lb of powder, but no sugar.
Leichhardt’s intention was to “follow the Cogoon to
Cooper’s Creek.” This is an absurdity in the face of our
present geographical information. The Cogoon is only a
tributary of the Condamine, and the Condamine runs into the
Balonne and the Murray. His intended course was probably west
across the Warrego towards the Bulloo, across Cooper’s Creek
in the direction of the Lower Diamantina, and thence over the
continent to the western coast. By this route he would cross
Mitchell’s Barcoo line of 1846, and Sturt’s track where he
reached his furthest point north of the Stony Desert on the 8th
of September, 1845.
Whatever route he took, it would be crossed in 1860 by
Stuart, in 1861 by Burke and Wills, and in 1862 by McKinlay
and Hodgkinson. Whether his proposed route would have taken
him away towards the Sandy Desert reached by Gregory from the
northwest in March, 1856, or across Sturt’s Desert through the
still unknown portion of the interior is a problem no man now
can ever solve.
His last letter is dated the 4th of April,
1848, from McPherson’s station on the Cogoon, beyond Mount
Abundance. He was then suffering from palpitation, and
apparently had never recovered from the effects of his
unfortunate journey to the Peak Downs.
On the way out he stayed a night with Chauvel at
Weeambilla Creek. The present Channing is Leichhardt’s “Sandy
Creek,” and Uhiba his “Horse Track River.”
The next creek was then called “Odookadooka,” and the
Balonne headwaters “Yancoodall.” The word “Dulacca” is the myall acacia;
Tieryboo is another acacia, and Mica is a water lily; all
native names in the ‘Cogal; dialect of the Maranoa.
There is not one sentence of evidence to show where
they went for 100 miles after leaving McPherson’s. At that
point they became enveloped in Egyptian darkness, which no
human eye has pierced up to the present time. They vanish
thence, voiceless and pathless, into Eternity, leaving their
fate chiefly to the mercy of shadowy conjecture, wild formless
rumour, or unfathomable lies.
Hovenden Hely went out to the head of the Warrego in
1851, and returned with a collection of idle tales from the
blacks.
In 1858, A. C. Gregory with eight men and a complete
equipment went west from Juanda across the divide of the
Dawson on to the Maranoa, and found a Moreton Bay ash marked
_], and other evidence of a camp in latitude 25 degrees, 35
minutes, longitude 36 degrees 6 minutes.
The country was in a state of desolation, the long
drought having dried up the rivers and lagoons and turned the
beautiful downs into a desert.
On the 28th of May, they saw one of
Kennedy’s marked trees of 1846. They went out to Streletzki
Creek, past lake Torrens and Mount Hopeless, thence to
Adelaide, and returned to Sydney by sea. The marked tree seen
by Gregory was eighty miles beyond where the blacks told Hely
all Leichhardt’s people were murdered.
That solitary letter on the Moreton Bay ash is all that
is left to tell us of the direction traveled by the lost
explorer, if we are sure it was not cut by one of Kennedy’s or
Mitchell’s men.
Landsborough’s expedition, after Burke and Wills,
obtained no information whatever concerning Leichhardt. Hely
had traced him to the head of the Warrego, and his last known
camp when Gregory went out was 230 miles beyond Surat.
Thenceforth the
Thenceforth the Egyptian darkness is only pierced by
the lightning flash of rumours which reveal nothing. Hume’s
tales of Classon living with the blacks and Skuthorpe’s relics
of the lost explorer must be consigned to the usual fate of
discoveries that rest solely on the unsupported assertion of
the discoverer. I was disposed to believe there really was
something in Hume’s circumstantial narrative, but his secret
ended with his cruel and untimely death. He was a splendid
bushman who made astonishing discoveries.
If Classen was a man of vitality and strong physique,
it would be quite possible to remain alive to old age among a
tribe of friendly blacks. Buckley was with the Victorian
natives for thirty three years. Finding goat hair ornaments
among the western tribes is not much value in face of the fact
that Leichhardt took no goats on the last expedition. The hair
from the 100 goats abandoned on the Mackenzie on his second
trip would be passed from tribe to tribe over immense
distances. Goat mutton would be a standard dish at myall
banquets in the Comet district long after Leichhardt left.
There are still old blacks out there who remember Leichhardt’s
goats, cows, and mules. They called the sheep and goats
“mang-gees,” the bullocks “boolah,” and the horse “wandee,”
the word for wild.
In the year 1866, Uhr’s black troopers at Cardwell had
two gins who were brought down from the Suttor River. They
gave a complete and true account of Leichhardt’s party and all
their movements on the Comet, but concluded by saying that the
blacks surprised them one night and exterminated the whole
party. The gins doubtless believed this story told to them by
the boastful warriors liars of the tribe. This plausible
fiction was gravely circulated at the time to account for the
fate of the lost party.
Gregory says Leichhardt intended to follow down the
Barcoo to its northern bend, and then sheer towards supposed
ranges at the head of the northwest rivers. His opinion is
that the party left the Barcoo at the junction with the Alice
and traveled far into the desert country to the northwest and
perished from thirst.
Ernest Favenc holds a somewhat similar opinion,
believing that the whole party vanished in the Central Desert.
In his work on the “Dominion of Australia,” W. H. L.
Bunken draws a highly poetic picture of the last hours of
Leichhardt’s party involved in tremendous floods in the basin
of Cooper’s Creek and swept away into destruction. “Last of
all, as the waters sapped and drowned the camp fire, Ludwig
Leichhardt strode into the flood and passed away upon that
exploration of which no traveler has ever reported.” The flood
theory is also that of Mann, Giles, and Forrest.
The theory of floods is weak. In the first place,
floods would have strewn the wreck of the party over
discoverable localities, and total obliteration of men,
animals, and baggage, in that fashion would verge on the
improbable. In the second place, there were no floods out
there in 1848. The rainfall on the coast for that year was
only 29 inches, and the years 1847 and 1848 were both dry.
If Hume’s story of Classon was true, and I am strongly
disposed to believe that it was, being both reasonable and
consistent, then we have the whole secret explained.
A party of convicts escaped from the penal settlement
in Western Australia, and went along the coast for a distance
of about a hundred miles. They found several old camps found
by white men, a big heap of oyster shells, and five human
skeletons. Among the relics were the rusted unstocked barrels
of five police carbines, bearing the broad arrow brand of the
Ordnance Dept.
Each of Leichhardt’s party was armed with a police
carbine from the Government stores in Sydney, and each carbine
bore the broad arrow brand. Classen told Hume the party
mutinied and the other five parted from him and Leichhardt. In
that case, Leichhardt, who was ill when he started, would
probably not long survive the ordeal of sickness or
starvation.
Classen would be left alone to the mercy of the blacks.
The convicts returned to the penal settlement and
related what they saw. A party went out and found everything
exactly according to the convicts’ description.
Then the Governor of Western Australia sent a despatch
to the Governor of New South Wales, giving an account of the
remains and expressing a belief that they were those of
Leichhardt’s party. If they really did separate, it must have
been under desperate circumstances. Classen would naturally
remain with his countryman. Once without a leader, the others
would probably be guided by Donald Stuart, who had been years
with the blacks, was a good bushman, and could live on
anything.
When they reached the coast at Shark’s Bay, their
ignorance of the country would prevent them knowing which way
to go, or the fact that there were within less than a hundred
miles of a penal settlement. They would continue to live on
the coast, eating fish and oysters, in the hope of attracting
the attention of a passing vessel. They would either be killed
by the blacks or perish with fever. They were not men likely
to die of starvation on the sea coast. In extreme hunger they
would have eaten one another and scattered the bones; in
thirst they would have wandered far apart; in illness one or
two would probably have been buried. Killed by the blacks is
the most reasonable theory.
But why was the most important evidence entirely
overlooked? Among those five men of Leichhardt’s party were
three whites and two blacks. Any man with the commonest
amateur knowledge of craniology would have known at a glance
the skulls of aboriginals from those of white men. If there
were two native and two European skulls, they disposed at once
of all reason for further controversy concerning Leichhardt.
In addition to this is the important fact that a stray
horse found far west in South Australia was identified by
Charles Marsh, of New England, as one presented by his brother
to Dr. Leichhardt. These are strong reasons for believing that
the story of Hume was correct, that Leichhardt had taken the
northwest course indicated in his last letter but one, in
which he says, “I shall go north from the Victoria (the
Barcoo) until I come on decided waters of the Gulf, and then
go west,” and thus Leichhardt died on the journey. Classon was
left among the blacks and the five skeletons found by the
escaped convicts at Shark’s Bay were those of Donald Stuart,
Kelly, Heatig, Womai, and Billy. This would also fully explain
the total disappearance of men and animals. An alternative
belief is the theory at the end of this article.
In 1864 the ladies of Victoria sent out a Leichhardt
search expedition under McIntyre, who had previously seen a
tree marked l and two day old saddle marked horses 300 miles
from the Gulf to the west of Burke’s track. Unfortunately
McIntyre died of malarial fever before leaving the Gulf.
Gilmore found six skeletons away out in Central
Australia, heard various rumours concerning a white man living
with the blacks, but came back with only a piece of moleskin
and oilcloth.
One more fact and we pass on to the conclusion. In
1862, when McDowall Stuart was returning across Sturt’s
Desert, he was met by a small party of wild blacks, among whom
was a half caste
boy about 13 years of age. This boy would be accounted for by
Leichhardt’s party passing that way in 1848, unless we are to
credit him to Sturt’s expedition of 1845. It is incredible
that Stuart took no notice of this boy, nor ever thought of an
attempt to ascertain his parentage. He passes over that most
important episode as an ordinary occurrence of no interest
whatever. If Leichhardt passed Sturt’s Desert, his fate is as
certain as if we had full particulars from a survivor. It
seems idle to suppose that he and all his men, stock and
baggage, were blotted from the face of the earth by blacks or
floods before reaching the desert.
Leichhardt, with his usual infatuated faculty for doing
the wrong thing, and his suicidal want of all ordinary
precaution and calculation, may have marched straight on into
the Central Desert without the smallest thought about water in
front or his base of supply in the rear. Treacherously lured
on by rapidly evaporating pools from thunder showers or light
temporary rains, he probably even went beyond the hunting
boundaries of the blacks, and on into that gloomy region ever
since untrodden by the foot of man. A search for him, in that
case, would be a search for Prester John, for Eldorado, for
the Holy Grail, for the Philosopher’s Stone. Beneath the red
sands of the desert lie the remains of Leichhardt and all his
party. There perished the ambitious man
There lie
they all “huddled in gray annihilation.”
Their
graves are hidden in a gloom deep and dark as that witch
conceals the last resting place of Moses the Jew and Alaric
the Visi Goth, Their Buzentinus is Alph the sunless
subterranean river, or the salt lakes; their “lone Bet-peor’s
land,” lies where the sharp spinifex hides its roots in the
death still sand waves of the Desert Ocean. No mortal eye
beheld the last struggle; no mortal ear heard the groans of
the dying explorers.
Vainly, in the last thirst madness they separated
looking for water, each to perish helpless and alone, each
left to the crowding thoughts of the dread moments when
Azrael, the Death Angel, is lowering the sable curtain on the
last scene. Ah, God, this is a cruel world, with its worship
of Mammon and Moloch, its breaking hearts; its ceaseless
tears; its never ceasing sight of weak women; its groans of
strong men; its cries of sick children; its never ending Death
March, and grim avenues of ever yawning graves.
And as the leader reclined there on the hot sand, in
that voiceless, awful, solitude, shunned by the swift birds,
shunned even by the spectral Winds, he thought of the woman he
loved far off by the “blue rushing of the arrowy Rhine,” the
one for whose sake he had gone forth into the world to hunt
for fame and fortune, and who would thenceforth know only,
like Vittoria Colonna,
The
lifelong martyrdom,
The
weariness, the endless pain,
Of
waiting for someone to come,
Who
never more would come again.
And death
came softly upon him in the darkness, his dreams of love and
fame ended in silence and oblivion, and day after day and year
after year the dismal desert ocean buried him deeper and
deeper beneath its waves, and the cruel spinifex hid even the
surface of the dead man’s sepulchre, until those who loved
him, alike with the heedless crown who care only to know how
he died, may look hereafter for ever in vain for the remains
of Lost Leichhardt.
______________________________________________________
Government
Residency,
Thursday
Island,
Torres
Straits,
December
16, 1898.
Sir, - It
has doubtless not escaped your attention that there have
lately been an unusual number of outrages perpetrated in
connection with the beche-de-mer industry.
I do not propose in this communication to refer to the
details of those outrages. It is desirable, however, that I
should make some general observations in connection with them
for your information.
They have occurred almost invariably in boats or on
stations wholly manned or carried on by native labourers.
There have been and there still are employers who treat
these natives fairly on the whole, though they are completely
at the mercy of their masters, and it is quite impossible to
exercise any such supervision as is found necessary in the
employment of gangs of South Sea Islanders or other coloured
labourers on sugar plantations. There are doubtless
exceptional cases of gross ill-treatment , though it would be
very difficult to prove these. The cases I refer to are
generally those in which there is a starvation allowance of
food. I have, however, known cases where murder has been
committed by the natives in pure revenge for personal injuries
and insults. But in the majority of cases the moving cause in
the perpetration of outrage is the desire to return home.
They are recruited often willingly enough. They have
heard strange tales of the sea from their friends, and they
are willing to go on a cruise for a time. They are shipped
with the vaguest possible idea of their duties or their
obligations. They perhaps work willingly enough for a time,
especially if they are well fed. But whether they are fed well
or ill, whether they are treated badly or not, there comes
over them, long before the expiration of their legal
agreement, an irrepressible desire to return to their own
country and to their tribal usages. They talk of this among
themselves. There are always some of them who know enough
about the navigation of a lugger to enable them to reach the
mainland. Then they agree to seize the first favourable
opportunity, and they make a dash for freedom.
If they get a chance they run away with the boat,
making straight for the mainland, landing anywhere they can,
and abandoning the boat. If they find they cannot do this
without killing their master, they avail themselves of the
first opportunity, and knock him on the head or pitch him
overboard. It is easily done, and if there is plenty of flour
and tobacco on board so much the better. Such is the history
of most of these outrages.
Then as to the industry. It is conducted almost
invariably by men who have only small capital, and who have
not the means to go into the pearl shelling industry.
There are few exceptions to this, but for the most part
a man who can afford to work a diving boat will have nothing
to do with the beche-de-mer industry.
It will not pay to employ labour at it on a lugger on a
higher scale than 10s a month, which is the usual covenanted
scale for the natives. It is not a nice business. Life on
board one of these boats, or at the stations on the islands
which are resorted to, is unspeakably squalid and dirty. For
some men, however, it has an attraction, and there is often
associated with it a good deal of illicit intercourse with
native women. It is altogether a nasty, stinking business, and
at the present time, it yields very small profits to anyone
connected with it. A few small commissions may be made by the
agents who consign the beche-de-mer to China, but I think that
most of these agents would be only too glad to realize the
advances made to the trade.
It may be asserted, indeed, it has been broadly
asserted by the local Press, which is of an exceptionally
unprincipled and inexperienced type, that the present outbreak
of atrocities is due to the presence of the Moravian
missionaries under the auspices
of the Presbyterian Federal Church at the Batavia
River. It is further stated that the hands of the police are
tied by the fact that the missionaries have impeded their
action, and checked their efficiency. The statements thus made
are most untrue, and most preposterous. The missionaries have
done all they could to facilitate the arrest of offenders. The
arrest of Harry Nichols’ would-be-murderers was made by them,
and could not have been made without them. The police,
moreover, are just as zealous as ever, though they have been
nearly worked off their feet. Their area of influence has been
from Somerset to the Scardon, about 10 miles to the north of
the Batavia. They have never attempted anything beyond this,
along the western shores of the peninsula, including the
Jardine River and Seven Rivers. Within that area they command,
and have commanded, the willing cooperation of the natives.
Beyond it they have never attempted any permanent influence,
and have not the means to command it. The police have always
acted most willingly and zealously.
Indeed both Mr. Sub-inspector Savage and Senior
Constable Conroy have suffered seriously in health from the
hardships they have sometimes had to undergo while camping
out.
It is both cruel and ridiculous to attribute either to
the police or to the missionaries crimes which have their
foundation in different causes altogether.
It is said, no doubt, that the mission station at the
Batavia River is an asylum for some of those runaway
murderers. It may be so. This, however, I will say, that the
fact that they have resorted to Mapoon has enabled us to make
arrests, which we certainly could not otherwise have made.
It is very evident to me that it will be necessary to
adopt some means to stop these outrages. It can be best done,
I believe, by checking the present system of recruiting; by
making a strict scrutiny into the character of those by whom
they are recruited; and by not allowing the mainland natives
to be worked except in combination with other nationalities.
In the meantime I propose not to allow natives from the
mainland to be shipped except in boats where there is a
sufficient proportion of South Sea Islanders, Malays, and
Japanese to render their presence harmless.
I shall be glad to know if this proposal meets with
your approval. If it is adopted, I feel confident that the
outrages will cease. I am etc
John
Douglas.