Had they only been bushmen the tracks would have told Wills of help within his reach, the fish hooks would have won them food in plenty. It is curious, too, that Burke died after a meal of crow and nardoo, there being neither sugar nor fat in these foods, without which they can not sustain a man’s life. Then King left Burke’s body, shot three crows and brought them to Wills, who was lying dead in camp. Three months afterward a relief party found King living among the natives “wasted to a shadow, and hardly to be distinguished as a civilized being but by the remnants of the clothes upon him.” “They should not have gone,” said one pioneer of these lost explorers. “They weren’t bushmen.” Afterward a Mr. Collis and his wife lived four years in plenty upon the game and fish at the Innaminka water-hole where poor Burke died of hunger. Such were the first crossings from east to west, and from south to north of the Australian continent. XVIII A. D. 1867 THE HERO-STATESMAN There is no greater man now living in the world than Diaz the hero-statesman, father of Mexico. What other soldier has scored fourteen sieges and fifty victorious battles? What other statesman, having fought his way to the throne, has built a civilized nation out of chaos? This Spanish-red Indian half-breed began work at the age of seven as errand boy in a shop. At fourteen he was earning his living as a private tutor while he worked through college for the priesthood. At seventeen he was a soldier in the local militia and saw his country overthrown by the United States, which seized three-fourths of all her territories. At the age of twenty-one, Professor Diaz, in the chair of Roman law at Oaxaca, was working double tides as a lawyer’s clerk. In the Mexican “republic” it is a very serious offense to vote for the Party-out-of-office, and the only way to support the opposition is to get out with a rifle and fight. So when Professor Diaz voted at the next general election he had to fly for his life. After several months of hard fighting he emerged from his first revolution as mayor of a village. The villagers were naked Indians, and found their new mayor an unexpected terror. He drilled them into soldiers, marched them to his native city Oaxaca, captured the place by assault, drove out a local usurper who was making things too hot for the citizens, and then amid the wild rejoicings that followed, was promoted to a captaincy in the national guards. Captain Diaz explained to his national guards that they were fine men, but needed a little tactical exercise. So he took them out for a gentle course of maneuvers, to try their teeth on a rebellion which happened to be camped conveniently in the neighborhood. When he had finished exercising his men, there was no rebellion left, so he marched them home. He had to come home because he was dangerously wounded.