ALLEGED FINDING OF LEICHHARDT RELICS.

Evening Star, Issue 5589, 5 February 1881, Page 2 (Supplement)

ALLEGED FINDING OF LEICHHARDT RELICS.

Concerning the disco very of Leichhardt's relics, as reported by telegram from Queensland, Baron Von who was an old and personal friend of Leichhardt, writes to the Melbourne 1 Age ' as follows : The telegrams received from Mr Skuthorpe concerning his recovery of Leichhardt's and Classan's journals, for which high praise is due, leave us at present in uncertainty whether it was the dreadful perishing through want of water, or the perhaps not less terrible death under the hands of the Natives, which deprived Australia thirty years ago of one of its leading explorers in a glorious and hopeful career. But this uneertainty will be seb at rest so soon as these precious records are accessible to the public. This recovery of the journals of the ill-gterred expedition is, go far, th« most remarkable in the whole history of geographic recovery, and proves how right the few were in Victoria who, against public opinion, clung to the hope that in these later years survivors of the Leichhardt party might still exist, or possibly the diaries be recovered. The ladies' committee formed in Melburne in 1865 deserved a better fate for the expedition sent out by them, . because H'lntyre passed within a few days' journey from Claesan's

camp in ISCG. But as o:i small circumstances sometimes the fate of empires depends, so one hasty false movement of the leader of that search party j scattered the large resources which the ladies had brought together over the desert, and, what was much more deplorable, sent the commander of: that expedition, in his attempt to refit at Carpentaria, prematurely to the grave. Otherwise at least one of the eight members of the Leichhardt expedition would have been almost surely brought back to settled communities, to tell the sad tale far more fully than the regained diaries now ever can, and to enjoy once more civilised life. One may imagine with what feelings Leichhardt wrote the last page of his diary, perhaps half delirious already from thirst, well knowing that, unless Clas?an had found water on that day, tho fat© of his party wan sealed. We must assume that tho brave little band cam© to an end through thirst, as Classan was able to carry with him Lsichhardt's journal, in hia attempt to save his own life, which tha presence of hostile savages would not allow. In various .journals Chvasn is mentioned as tha brother-in-law of IWchhardt; but from tho last letter, written in February, 134:8, from Darling Down?, by the unfortunate explorer to his sister in Prussia, Cla**»*n seeraa not to have been a relative of the Leiohhardt family. On mora than one occasion Leichhardt is stated to fiare been "no bushman." Whatever that term means, if it me-ms anything at all, it must apply to a man who made, with slender means, one of tho longest and most brilliant journeys ever performed for Australian geography, and won for himself not only the gold medals of the Royal Geographic Societies of London and Paris (in 18i0), but a'so the golden opinion of the whole world. Of Hume, who perished at the very outset of a new search, we must speak with charity now. His startling (and, under the peculiar circumstances, almost incredible) account of Classan's stay with Natives on the Mulgrave lliver, where he is said to have spent a month with him in 1867, preves now one of truthfulness, and whatever the man's shortcomings were, he should get credit for thafe. It is only a pity that he did not make a full statement of all th&t he did know, for even if Classan spoke no English there mwst hare been means in one month's time to look over Leichhardo'i journal, and to ddviao other subsequent details connected with the fate of the unfortunate party and his own safe retreat or advance to the Mulligan River. If Hume had fully divulged what ire must have known, and kept his account clear of unreliable additions, all Australia with one voice would hare demanded tho immediate release and delivery of Classan from his long exile in the desert of Central Australia. "Withal now particularly a feeling of deep regret cannot be suppressed that Leichhardt and his companions were so long forsaken when the expenditure for a few and perhaps unnecessary banquefcs, or the clipping in one year of th« wool of a few flocks, woulal have sufficed to shed light on the fate of a brave party, not in the interest of geography only, a dozen years earlier, aad would hava rescued one of the poor fellows, at all events. Even now (to trust to Hume) another one is left lingering west of the telegraph lines. But it has not been for the want of a pleader of Leidhhardt's causer in our city that this tragedy closed: as sad as possibly it could;; and even now another gold medallist of the Roya} Geographical Society is set aside by all Australia—the colleague last year as medallist of the commander of the i Vega, who is lionised all over Europe, j and who accomplished what was striven j for, since centauries, the eastern Arctic i passage.