Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/45

 imported from India, and which were thus promptly to be put upon trial as to their merits for Australian purposes. They have well stood this trial, both in this expedition and in the subsequent journey of McKinlay, in which they also formed a part of the stock. They are therefore already a feature associated with Australian travel. They are, at all events, indelibly so associated in the minds of the aboriginal natives, who everywhere beheld them with alarm and astonishment in their unexpected irruption into the solitudes of the interior.

The command of the expedition was given to Burke. It had swelled out into large dimensions, and formed quite a public spectacle as its numerous and varied components poured forth from Melbourne upon the long journey. But delays had occurred, and the season was advanced beyond the most favourable time for action. Leaving Melbourne on the 20th August, 1860, it was the middle of December, that is to say, almost the middle of summer, ere Burke found himself on the foreground at Cooper's Creek ready to start for Carpentaria. Difficulties had already arisen; the company was too large and too much encumbered. Burke had early pushed on with a section of it, leaving the remainder to follow. At Cooper's Creek he still further reduced this party, taking only Wills, his second in command, and