Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/22

 This unfortunate issue however, was fruitful in results to the cause of Australian discovery. After an interval sufficiently long to arouse alarm as to the fate of the explorers, the Victoria Government despatched its armed steamer "Victoria" to the Head of the Carpentarian Gulf with suitable supplies, and organized two further expeditions, in the hope that Burke and Wills might be assisted, or at least that their fate might be ascertained. One of these parties, under Walker, proceeded from Rockhampton in Queensland to the Head of the Gulf of Carpentaria; the other, under Landsborough, landed in the Gulf itself, and beginning from the north, made a successful and very important journey southwards across Australia. The South Australian Government came also to the rescue, and equipped McKinlay and his party, whose journey across Australia northwards, equally successful and not less important, is the subject now before us. Indefatigable in his own exertions, and successful in the order and discipline of his party, Mr. McKinlay seems to have been eminently suitable for the mission entrusted to him.

STUART'S EXPEDITIONS, 1858—1862. While McKinlay was proceeding north, in a direction suited to the special object of his expedition, the Government of South Australia had