Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/179

 of the former lie buried. There were also reports of some of the whites being still alive, and living on the Cooper. Some difficulty in reconciling these reports made by the natives of fights and massacres, as well as the actual data supplied by McKinlay, with the narratives of Burke's party, led to the idea that there must have been some other party of colonists on the scene, about whom we know nothing beyond these lamentable rumours and traces of their extinction. It is, however, quite unlikely that any such party could have proceeded from any of the adjacent colonies thus entirely unheard of; the accounts, besides, are not really irreconcileable when critically examined by the aid of the reliable facts given by McKinlay. The following short statement is the probable clearing up of the fog.

A report from a distance of four white persons killed seems, as the distance narrowed, to settle down with increasing clearness to one person—at least, there was but one body alluded to as McKinlay neared the scene; and report went on to say that he was buried by his comrades, but that after their departure the natives had dug him up, and cut off the fleshy parts and eaten them. Close to a small lake, which, in the face of such reports McKinlay could not do less than name Lake Massacre, a grave was pointed out—not that of a native, evidently, from the slight care bestowed