Colonial Secretary of Queensland, and he certainly gave me no
instructions respecting the route I was to take, but for which he
referred me to your instructions. In these it was contemplated that I
should return by sea. Had it been contemplated that I was to have come
back overland my instructions would have been, I dare say, to have come
back by Mount Stuart. From having travelled in the end of last year about
halfway to Mount Stuart from the Albert River depot, I consider that if I
had waited a few weeks when I reached the 138th meridian I would have had
the advantage of the wet season, and might have proceeded by that route,
or at all events gone south from that meridian provided I had sufficient
equipment for that purpose.

My opinion was, as may be seen in my correspondence with Captain Norman,
that Burke and Wills had gone from their depot by Bowen Downs towards
Carpentaria. I therefore came overland that way, and as I did not learn
anything of their party from the blacks when I reached there I proceeded
to the settled country.

For my part I must say that I think, with the information we had then, we
took the most probable route for finding Burke's party. In all our
expeditions we followed the watercourses and went over more ground than I
thought it should have been possible to do with our small and shipwrecked
equipment.

I never imagined that Burke and Wills would have been able to walk
straight from Cooper's Creek across what I thought was in a great measure
a desert to Carpentaria. It should also be remembered that when I wrote
my letter to you on my arrival at the Darling River we had learned all
about the fate of Burke's party, and the time was past for saying much
about our want of success with respect to them.