It was a gala day when they left Melbourne, and their progress through the settled districts was a triumphant march; it almost seemed that Fate was playing with them in very mockery, smiling at the thought of the return. The choice of the leader has always been a puzzle to most men, and it can only be accounted for in two ways. First, that the committee of management did not wish (as was only natural) to go outside of the colony for a man, and the tried and experienced explorers were all residents in other colonies; secondly, that the committee was, with two notable exceptions, composed of men quite unable to judge of the qualities essential in a leader; for the man of their choice, the unfortunate Burke, was most singularly unfitted for the position. Burke was an Irishman, from the county of Galway. He had been in the Austrian service, and also in the Irish mounted constabulary. At the time when he applied for the post, which unhappily was awarded to him, he was an inspector of mounted police at Castlemaine. His appointment as leader was strongly supported by the chairman of the committee, Sir William Stawell, and it appears to have been backed up by those kind of general testimonials as to ability which recommend a man almost equally for any grade or position. Of special aptitude or scientific training he possessed no pretension, and his selection was a fatal blunder. In saying this, there is no reflection on the private character of the mistaken leader; he paid for the wrong estimation he held of his own fitness with his life, and the fault rests with those who placed him in a position where he also was responsible for the lives of others. After passing in review the different expeditions that have added so much lustre to our history, and striving to judge dispassionately of the characters of the men who, with good and evil fortune, have commanded them, one cannot help being struck by the exaggerated and misplaced stress laid upon the reputation Burke possessed for personal bravery. The calm and simple courage of Sturt, the cool judgment and forethought of Mitchell, the devotion of Austin, seem all to have been lost sight of by writers, who extol Burke in a way that would lead men to believe that every other Australian leader must have been an abject craven. This mistaken laudation has done more to glaringly parade Burke's many failings than more modest and judicious praise would have done. Of his second, W. J. Wills (who shared the fate of his leader), he appears to have been a man eminently possessed of most of the qualities that would fit him for the position he held, but apparently tempered with an amiability of disposition that led him to give way completely to the rash judgment of his superior, without striving to temper that rashness.