The Cooper is known in times of flood to reach a width of between forty and fifty miles, the whole valley being inundated.  Floods may surround a traveller while not a drop of local rain may fall, and had the members of this expedition perished in any other way, some remains of iron pack-saddle frames, horns, bones, skulls, firearms, and other articles must have been found by the native inhabitants who occupied the region, and would long ago have been pointed out by the aborigines to the next comers who invaded their territories.  The length of time that animals’ bones might remain intact in the open air in Australia is exemplified by the fact that in 1870, John Forrest found the skull of a horse in one of Eyre’s camps on the cliffs of the south coast thirty years after it was left there by Eyre.  Forrest carried the skull to Adelaide.  I argue, therefore, that if Leichhardt’s animals and equipment had not been buried by a flood, some remains must have been since found, for it is impossible, if such things were above ground that they could escape the lynx-like glances of Australian aboriginals, whose wonderful visual powers are unsurpassed among mankind.  Everybody and everything must have been swallowed in a cataclysm and buried deep and sure in the mud and slime of a flood.

The New South Wales Government made praiseworthy efforts to rescue the missing traveller.  About a year after Leichhardt visited Port Essington, the Government abandoned the settlement, and the prevailing opinion in the colony of New South Wales at that time was, that Leichhardt had not been able to reach Eyre’s Creek, but had been forced up north, from his intended route, the inland-sea theory still prevailing, and that he had probably returned to the old settlement for relief.  Therefore, when he had been absent two years, the Government despatched a schooner to the abandoned place.  The master of the vessel saw several of the half-civilised natives, who well remembered Leichhardt’s arrival there, but he had not returned.  The natives promised the master to take the greatest care of him should he again appear, but it is needless to say he was seen no more.  The Government were very solicitous about him, and when he had been absent four years, Mr. Hovendon Heley was sent away with an outfit of pack-horses and six or seven men, to endeavour to trace him.  This expedition seems to have wandered about for several months, and discovered, as Mr. Heley states, two marked trees branded exactly alike, namely L over XVA, and each spot where these existed is minutely described.  There was at each, a water-hole, upon the bank of which the camp was situated; at each camp a marked tree was found branded alike; at each, the frame of a tent was left standing; at each, some logs had been laid down to place the stores and keep them from damp.  The two places as described appear so identical that it seems impossible to think otherwise than that Heley and his party arrived twice at the same place without