Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/182

 excursion on 24th October. It was not until the 29th November that the party sent back to Blanchewater for more provisions had returned, bringing the news that Howitt had learned the fate of Burke's party, and had rescued the solitary survivor, King. Howitt arrived at the Cooper in the middle of September, just a month prior to McKinlay's arrival at Lake Buchanan, so that the reports of the natives as to some surviving remnant of the whites being at the Cooper were accurate enough. He still resolves to visit the Cooper, however, in the hope of observing its lower course towards the south, should the preceding rains have filled its bed with a running stream. After being detained above a month in the hope of rain to enable him to get over the parched country, he reaches the Cooper, and conjectures that it discharges its waters partly by Strzelecki Creek, running south towards the Torrens and Spencer Gulf, and partly by another branch taking at first a north-westerly course, but eventually turning in the southerly direction. He was successful in finding also the graves of both Burke and Wills. The remains of the unfortunate travellers were, as we have already stated elsewhere, conveyed to Melbourne by a party under Howitt, sent a second time and specially for the purpose by the Government of Victoria, and publicly re-interred in the cemetery outside that city.