e others rushed in and finished the deadly work.

[Illustration. A Chief of the Bogan River Tribe. Photo by the Reverend
J.M. Curran.]

As is often the case with men lost in the bush, the unfortunate botanist,
by wandering on confusing and contradictory courses, had rendered the
work of the search party more tedious and difficult, thus sealing his own
fate. A rude stone memorial has since been erected on the spot, and a
tablet put up in the St. Andrew's Scots Church, Sydney. The death of
Cunningham, who was a young and ardent man with the promise of a
brilliant future caused Mitchell much distress of mind. He did all he
could to find his lost comrade, and jeopardised the success of the
expedition by the long delay of fourteen days.

He resumed his journey by easy stages down the Bogan, and on the 25th of
May came to the Darling. This river was at once recognised by all who had
been with him on his former trip as identical with the Karaula as
Mitchell had supposed; but he found the country in a different condition
from that presented by it when Sturt and Hume first discovered the river
at nearly the same place. The water was now fresh and sweet to drink, and
the flats and banks luxuriant with grass and herbage.

After choosing a site for a camp, where the town of Bourke now stands,
Mitchell erected a stockade of logs, which he named Fort Bourke, after
the Governor. The country on either side of the Darling was now alive
with natives, and though a sort of armed truce was kept up, it was at the
cost of constant care and watchfulness, and the tactful submission to
numerous annoyances, including much petty pilfering. The boats proved to
be of no service, and after Mitchell with a small party had made a short
excursion down the river to the farthest limit of Sturt and Hume in 1829,
where he saw the tree then marked by Hume, H.H., he had the camp
dismantled, and started with the whole party to follow the river down to
its junction with the Murray.

By the 11th of July, one month after leaving Fort Bourke, they had traced
the river for three hundred miles through a country of level monotony
unbroken by any tributary rivers or creeks of the least importance.
Mitchell was now certain from the steadfast direction the river
maintained, and the short distance that now intervened between the lowest
point they had reached and Sturt's junction, that Sturt had really been
correct in his surmise, and that he had witnessed the meeting