Australia, being the harshest country on earth, breeds the hardiest pioneers, horsemen, bushmen, trackers, hunters, scouts, who find the worst African or American travel a sort of picnic. The bushie is disappointing to town Australians because he has no swank, and nothing of the brilliant picturesqueness of the American frontiersman. He is only a tall, gaunt man, lithe as a whip, with a tongue like a whip-lash; and it is on bad trips or in battle that one finds what he is like inside, a most knightly gentleman with a vein of poetry. Anyway the Melbourne people were cracked in 1860 when they wanted an expedition to cross Australia northward, and instead of appointing bushmen for the job selected tenderfeet. Burke was an Irishman, late of the Hungarian cavalry, and the Royal Irish Constabulary, serving as an officer in the Victorian police. Wills was a Devon man, with some frontier training on the sheep runs, but had taken to astronomy and surveying. There were several other white men, and three Afghans with a train of camels. They left Melbourne with pomp and circumstance, crossed Victoria through civilized country, and made a base camp on the Darling River at Menindie. There Burke sacked two mutinous followers and his doctor scuttled in a funk, so he took on Wright, an old settler who knew the way to Cooper’s Creek four hundred miles farther on. Two hundred miles out Wright was sent back to bring up stores from Menindie, while the expedition went on to make an advanced base at Cooper’s Creek. Everything was to depend on the storage of food at that base. While they were waiting for Wright to come up with their stores, Wills and another man prospected ninety miles north from Cooper’s Creek to the Stony Desert, a land of white quartz pebbles and polished red sandstone chips. The explorer Sturt had been there, and come back blind. No man had been beyond. Wills, having mislaid his three camels, came back ninety miles afoot without water, to find the whole expedition stuck at Cooper’s Creek, waiting for stores. Mr. Wright at Menindie burned time, wasting six weeks before he attempted to start with the stores, and Burke at last could bear the delay no longer. There were thunder-storms giving promise of abundant water for once in the northern desert, so Burke marched with Wills, King and Gray, taking a horse and six camels. William Brahe was left in charge at the camp at Cooper’s Creek, to remain with ample provisions until Wright turned up, but not to leave except in dire extremity. Burke’s party crossed the glittering Stony Desert, and watching the birds who always know the way to water, they came to a fine lake, where they spent Christmas day. Beyond that they came to the Diamantina and again there was water. The country improved, there were northward flowing streams to cheer them on their way, and at last they came to salt water at the head of the Gulf of Carpentaria. They had crossed the continent from south to north.