History of Australia and New Zealand from 1606 to 1890Sutherland, Alexander
History
History of Australia and New Zealand from 1606 to 1890
Sutherland, Alexander
Australia -- History; New Zealand -- History
nardoo seed; but their small strength could not provide enough to
support them. Once or twice they shot a crow, but such slight repasts
served only to prolong their sufferings. Wills, throughout all his
journeyings, had kept a diary, but now the entries became very short; in
the struggle for life there was no time for such duties, and the grim
fight with starvation required all their strength.
At this time Wills records that he cannot understand why his legs are so
weak; he has bathed them in the stream, but finds them no better, and he
can hardly crawl out of the hut. His next entry is, that unless relief
comes shortly he cannot last more than a fortnight. After this his mind
seems to have begun to wander; he makes frequent and unusual blunders in
his diary. The last words he wrote were that he was waiting, like Mr.
Micawber, for something to turn up, and that, though starving on nardoo
seed was by no means unpleasant, yet he would prefer to have a little
fat and sugar mixed with it.
#4. Death of Burke and Wills.#--Burke now thought that their only chance
was to find the blacks, and proposed that he and King should set out for
that purpose. They were very loath to leave Wills, but, under the
circumstances, no other course was possible. They laid him softly within
the hut, and placed at his head enough of nardoo to last him for eight
days. Wills asked Burke to take his watch, and a letter he had written
for his father; the two men pressed his hands, smoothed his couch
tenderly for the last time, and set out. There, in the utter silence of
the wilderness, the dying man lay for a day or two: no ear heard his
last sigh, but his end was as gentle as his life had been free from
reproach.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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