On the 27th of March, 1840, he reached the cattle station on the Tambo whither McMillan had just returned, and was directed by him on to his newly-discovered country.  Strzelecki pushed through to Western Port, meeting with some scrubby and almost inaccessible country during the last stages of his journey.  His party had to abandon both horses and packs, and fight its way through a dense undergrowth on a scanty ration of one biscuit and a slice of bacon per day, varied with an occasional native bear.  It was here that the Count, who was an athletic man, found that his hardy constitution stood the party in good stead.  So weakened and exhausted were his companions, that it was only by constant encouragement that he urged them along at all.  When forcing their way through the matted growth of scrub, he often threw himself bodily upon it, breaking a path for his weary followers by the mere weight of his body.  It was in a wretched condition that they at last reached Western Port.

8.3.  Patrick Leslie.

In 1840 Patrick Leslie, who has always been considered the father of settlement on the Darling Downs, started with stock from a New England station, then the most northerly settled district in New South Wales, and formed the first station on the Condamine River, actually before that river had been identified as a tributary of the Darling.  There was a general impression that the Condamine flowed north and east, and finally found its way through the main range to the Pacific.  In 1841, Stuart Russell, who closely followed Leslie as a pioneer, followed the river down for more than a hundred miles to the westward, and in the following year it was traced still further, and the Darling generally accepted as its final destination.

8.4.  Ludwig Leichhardt.

[Illustration.  Ludwig Leichhardt.]

Leichhardt is the Franklin of Australia, around whose name has ever clung a tantalising veil of mystery and romance.  Truth to tell, his claim as a leading explorer rests solely on his first and undoubtedly fruitful expedition.  But for his mysterious fate mention of his name would not stir the hearts of men as it does.  Had he returned from his final venture beaten, it must have been to live through the remainder of his life a disappointed and embittered man.  Far better for one of his temperament to rest in the wilderness, his grave unknown, but his memory revered.

Leichhardt was born at Beskow, near Berlin, and studied at Berlin.  Through an oversight he was omitted from the list of those liable to the one year of military service, and the sweets of exemption tempted him to evade the three-year military course.  The consequence was that he was prosecuted as a deserter, and sentenced in contumaciam.  Afterwards, Alexander von Humboldt succeeded, by describing his services to science on his first expedition in Australia, in obtaining a pardon from the King.  By a Cabinet Order, Leichhardt received permission to return to Prussia unpunished.  When the order arrived in Australia, he had already started on his last expedition.