most extraordinary incident being the statement that his horses
travelled for seven days and nights without water. I have travelled
with horses in almost every part of Australia, but I know that after
three days and three nights without water horses would certainly knock
up, die, or become utterly useless, and it would be impossible to make
them continue travelling. Another remarkable incident of his march is
strange enough. One night whilst Eyre was watching the horses, there
being no water at the encampment, Baxter, his only white companion,
was murdered by two little black boys belonging to South Australia,
who had been with Eyre for some time previously. These little boys
shot Baxter and robbed the camp of nearly all the food and ammunition
it contained, and then, while Eyre was running up from the horses to
where Baxter lay, decamped into the bush and were only seen the
following morning, but never afterwards. One other and older boy, a
native of Albany, whither Eyre was bound, now alone remained. Eyre and
this boy (Wylie) now pushed on in a starving condition, living upon
dead fish or anything they could find for several weeks, and never
could have reached the Sound had they not, by almost a miracle, fallen
in with a French whaling schooner when nearly 300 miles had yet to be
traversed. The captain, who was an Englishman named Rossiter, treated
them most handsomely; he took them on board for a month while their
horses recruited on shore--for this was a watering place of
Flinders--he then completely refitted them with every necessary before
he would allow them to depart. Eyre in gratitude called the place
Rossiter Bay, but it seems to have been prophetically christened
previously by the ubiquitous Flinders, under the name of Lucky Bay.
Nearly all the watering places visited by Eyre consisted of the
drainage from great accumulations of pure white sand or hummocks,
which were previously discovered by the Investigator; as Flinders
himself might well have been called. The most peculiar of these