outh Australia to advance in the direction of Lake Torrens and
reach Cooper's Creek. These various expeditions were all eager in
prosecuting the search, but it was to Mr. Howitt's party that success
fell. In following the course of Cooper's Creek downward from the depot
he saw the tracks of camels, and by these he was led to the district in
which Burke and Wills had died.

Several natives, whom he met, brought him to the place where, beneath a
native hut, King was sitting, pale, haggard, and wasted to a shadow. He
was so weak that it was with difficulty Howitt could catch the feeble
whispers that fell from his lips; but a day or two of European food
served slightly to restore his strength. Howitt then proceeded to the
spot where the body of Wills was lying partly buried, and, after reading
over it a short service, he interred it decently. Then he sought the
thicket where the bones of Burke lay with the rusted pistol beside them,
and, having wrapped a union jack around them, he dug a grave for them
hard by.

Three days later the blacks were summoned, and their eyes brightened at
the sight of knives, tomahawks, necklaces, looking-glasses, and so
forth, which were bestowed upon them in return for their kindness to
King. Gay pieces of ribbon were fastened round the black heads of the
children, and the whole tribe moved away rejoicing in the possession of
fifty pounds of sugar, which had been divided among them.

When Howitt and King returned, and the sad story of the expedition was
related, the Victorian Government sent a party to bring the remains of
Burke and Wills to Melbourne, where they received the melancholy honours
of a public funeral amid the general mourning of the whole colony. In
after years, a statue was raised to perpetuate their heroism and testify
to the esteem with which the nation regarded their memory.

#6. M'Douall Stuart.#--Burke and Wills were the first who ever crossed
the Australian Continent; but, for several years before they set out,
another traveller had, with wonderful perseverance, repeatedly attempted
this feat. John M'Douall Stuart had served as draughtsman in Sturt's
expedition to the Stony Desert, and he had been well trained in that
school of adversity and sufferings. He was employed, in 1859, by a
number of squatters, who wished him to explore for them new lands in
South Australia, and having found a passage between Lake Eyre and Lake
Torrens, he discovered, beyond the deserts which