With blithe hearts they set out on their return, and if they had to kill the camels for food, then to eat snakes, which disagreed with them, still there would be plenty when they reached Cooper’s Creek. Gray complained of being ill, but pilfering stores is not a proper symptom of any disease, so Burke gave him a thrashing by way of medicine. When he died, they delayed one day for his burial; one day too much, for when they reached Cooper’s Creek they were just nine hours late. Thirty-one miles they made in the last march and reeled exhausted into an empty camp ground. Cut in the bark of a tree were the words “Dig, 21 April 1861.” They dug a few inches into the earth where they found a box of provisions, and a bottle containing a letter. “The depot party of the V. E. E. leave this camp to-day to return to the Darling. I intend to go S. E. from camp sixty miles to get into our old track near Bulloo. Two of my companions and myself are quite well; the third, Patten, has been unable to walk for the last eighteen days, as his leg has been severely hurt when thrown from one of the horses. No person has been up here from Darling. We have six camels and twelve horses in good working condition. William Brahe.” It would be hopeless with two exhausted camels to try and catch up with that march. Down Cooper’s Creek one hundred fifty miles the South Australian Mounted Police had an outpost, and the box of provisions would last out that short journey. They were too heart-sick to make an inscription on the tree, but left a letter in the bottle, buried. A few days later Brahe returned with the industrious Mr. Wright and his supply train. Here is the note in Wright’s diary:-- “May eighth. This morning I reached the Cooper’s Creek depot and found no sign of Mr. Burke’s having visited the creek, or the natives having disturbed the stores.” Only a few miles away the creek ran out into channels of dry sand where Burke, Wills and King were starving, ragged beggars fed by the charitable black fellows on fish and a seed called nardoo, of which they made their bread. There were nice fat rats also, delicious baked in their skins, and the natives brought them fire-wood for the camp. Again they attempted to reach the Mounted Police outpost, but the camels died, the water failed, and they starved. Burke sent Wills back to Cooper’s Creek. “No trace,” wrote Wills in his journal, “of any one except the blacks having been here since we left.” Brahe and Wright had left no stores at the camp ground.