Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/193

Rh pursued their way, now with labour and difficulty over the most stony wilderness imaginable, now with comparative ease over sandhills or earthy plains, cracked and fissured for want of water in all directions, sometimes bare and brown, sometimes cumbered with the dry stalks of withered plants, which rose higher than a horse and showed how, after heavy rains, the face of these arid deserts would change as by magic into a teeming jungle of vegetation. Thus they journeyed till one day, riding alone, Mr. Howitt perceived some native huts on the further side of a dry waddy, and in the foreground a black man and woman gathering sticks. The woman at once made off towards the huts, but the man stood his ground and gesticulated in great excitement to Mr. Howitt, until on the approach of the traveller he also took to his heels. To regain his party Mr. Howitt rode along the bank of the waddy, and met his native riders, one of whom shouted to him: "Find em whitefella; two fella dead boy and one fella livo." Hastening to the native camp, Mr. Howitt found the last survivor of the missing explorers, John King, sitting in one of the huts. He was a melancholy object, hardly to be distinguished as a civilised man by the tatters that still hung on his weak, emaciated frame. At first he was too much overcome by emotion to speak distinctly; but in time he recovered sufficiently to tell his tale of suffering and disaster. It was the 25th of September when the rescuers and the rescued turned their faces homeward; on November 28th, 1861, they all reached Melbourne in safety.

A few days later the intrepid and indefatigable explorer started again for the deserts of the far interior to explore the region of Cooper's Creek and to bring back the bones of the men who had fallen martyrs to science, that they might be buried with public honours in the city. This task also Mr. Howitt accomplished successfully. He brought back the remains of Burke and Wills to