Of the other, under Kennedy, two ghastly famished
spectres, that had once been white men, and a naked blackfellow, alone
were rescued out of thirteen.
The same impulses that led to Mitchell's and Leichhardt's northern
journeys, started Kennedy on his fatal venture up the eastern slope of
the long peninsula that terminates in Cape York. The desire to find a
road to the north coast, so that an available chain of communication
should exist between the southern settlements and a northern seaport.
Kennedy started from Sydney on board the barque TAM O'SHANTER, on the
29th of April, 1848. He had twelve men in his party, including Mr. Carron
as botanist, one of the survivors who published the account of the trip,
and Mr. Wall, naturalist. Their outfit consisted of twenty-eight horses
and one hundred sheep, besides the other necessary rations, carts, &c.
The instructions were to land at Rockingham Bay, and examine the eastern
coast of the peninsula, to Port Albany in the extreme north, where a ship
would meet and receive them. Such was the programme, alas for the
performance!
On the 30th of May, they landed in Rockingham Bay, with the loss of one
horse, and Kennedy made his first acquaintanceship with the tropical
jungles of northern Queensland (that now is), including the terrible
lawyer vine [Calamus Australis.
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