The curtain drops here on the history of the great Victorian Exploring Expedition, and little more remains to be told of its results or shortcomings.  The continent was crossed, the Gulf reached, and the road indicated by the hardy pioneers, which their successors will find it comparatively easy to level and macadamize.  Already the stimulant of the Burke and Wills catastrophe has called into active exercise the successive expeditions and discoveries of Howitt, Norman, Walker, Landsborough, and McKinlay.  Others will rapidly follow, with the characteristic energy and perseverance of the Saxon race.  Now that time has, to a certain extent, allayed the poignant grief of those who are most nearly and dearly interested in the fate of the original explorers; when first impulses have cooled down, and the excitement of personal feelings has given way before unquestionable evidence, we may safely ascribe, as far as human agencies are concerned, the comparative failure of the enterprise to the following specific causes:—­

1.  The double mistake on the part of the leader, of dividing and subdividing his forces at Menindie and Cooper’s Creek;

2.  The utter unfitness of Wright for the position in which he was placed;

3.  The abandonment by Brahe of the depot at Cooper’s Creek;

4.  The resolve of the surviving explorers to attempt the route by Mount Hopeless, on their homeward journey;

And lastly, to the dilatory inefficiency of the Committee, in not hurrying forward reliefs without a moment’s delay, as the state of circumstances became gradually known to them.

It is not so easy to estimate the relative quantity of blame which ought justly to attach to all who are implicated.  Each will endeavour to convince himself that his own share is light, and that the weight of the burden should fall on the shoulders of some one else.  Meanwhile, there remain for the heroic men who died in harness without a murmur in the unflinching exercise of their duty, an undying name, a public funeral, and a national monument; the unavailing sympathy and respect which rear an obelisk instead of bestowing a ribbon or a pension; recorded honours to the unconscious dead, in place of encouraging rewards to the triumphant living.  A reverse of the picture, had it been permitted, might have been more agreeable; but the lesson intended to be conveyed, and the advantages to be derived from studying it, would have been far less salutary and profitable.

CHAPTER 14.

Letters of sympathy and condolence; from Sir Henry Barkly; Major
   Egerton Warburton; A.J.  Baker, Esquire; P.A.  Jennings, Esquire;
   Dr. Mueller; The Council of Ballaarat East; Robert Watson,
   Esquire; John Lavington Evans, Esquire
Meeting at Totnes. 
Resolution to erect a Monument to Mr. Wills. 
Proceedings in the Royal Geographical Society of London. 
Letter from Sir Roderick Murchison to Dr. Wills. 
Dr. Wills’s Reply. 
The Lost Explorers, a poetical tribute. 
Concluding Observations.