Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/92

 the long pending solution of the Australian problem. A sum of £1000 has also been awarded to McKinlay. As it is pleasant to narrate the liberalities of Governments, we go on to say that the relatives of Burke and Wills, as well as King, the survivor of the party, have received very considerable gratuities and pensions from the Government of Victoria. The relics of the heroes themselves, recovered as we have said by a special mission to the interior, were committed to the grave with the honours of a state funeral; while a grant of £4,000 has been made from the public revenue for the construction of a suitable memorial of their achievements and misfortunes.

WHAT IS IN THE FUTURE?

With pleasure we also observe, from a recent intimation of the Secretary for the Colonies, that the part of these Northern Australian regions continuous in a northerly direction with the colony of South Australia—the part, in fact, traversed and explored by Stuart—is to be annexed to that colony. The large remainder of North Australia, to the eastward, falls in the meantime naturally into Queensland, whose colonists, after the galloping fashion of pastoral settlement in Australia, have already advanced their squatting outposts beyond Port Denison, in latitude 20°, and the mouth of the Burdekin in latitude 19°—places