The lost expedition is supposed to have consisted of six whites and two
blacks. The names known are those of the Doctor himself, Classen, Hentig,
Stuart, and Kelly. He had with him fifty bullocks, thirteen mules, twelve
horses, and two hundred and seventy goats, beside the utterly inadequate
allowance of eight hundred pounds of flour, one hundred and twenty pounds
of tea, some sugar and salt, and two hundred and fifty pounds of shot and
forty of powder.
His last letter [See Appendix.] is dated the 3rd of April, 1848, from
McPherson's station on the Cogoon, but in it he speaks only of the.
country traversed, and says nothing of his intended route. Since the
residents of this outlying station lost sight of him and his men, no clue
to his fate has ever been found. The total evanishment not only of his
men but of the animals (especially the goats) that accompanied him, is
one of the strangest mysteries of our mysterious interior.
Leichhardt's expressed intention was to endeavour to skirt the edge of
the desert--which was then supposed to exist in the centre--to the
northward, seizing the first opportunity of penetrating it, and then
making for Perth.
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