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Updated: May 15, 2025
Rajah was very ill and on the point of dying, when Burke ordered him to be shot, his flesh being afterwards dried in the usual manner. Some friendly blacks, whom they amused by lighting fires with matches, gave them some fish and a kind of bread called nardoo.
They were very loath to leave Wills, but, under the circumstances, no other course was possible. They laid him softly within the hut, and placed at his head enough of nardoo to last him for eight days. Wills asked Burke to take his watch, and a letter he had written for his father; the two men pressed his hands, smoothed his couch tenderly for the last time, and set out.
One woman to whom he gave a part of a crow gave him a ball of nardoo, and, showing him a wound on her arm, intimated that she would give him more, but she was unable to pound it. When King saw the wound he boiled some water in his billy and bathed it. About two months later the relief party reached the depôt, where they found the letters and journals the explorers had placed in the cache.
They followed Burke's tracks for some days but never reached him, their horses gave in, and they being insufficiently provided with provisions nearly perished, finally they were picked up by a relief party under Doctor Beckler. The nardoo which served to prolong the life of Burke and Wills for a considerable time is a small ground plant resembling clover in the shape of its leaves.
On the way they kept alive on fish which they sometimes procured from natives, having nothing else but nardoo seeds plucked from the clover fern. Half dead with hunger and weariness they came back to the camp. Midwinter, the end of June, was come, and the nights were cold. It was decided that Burke and King should go out and look for natives.
We were all three beginning to feel bad now, so it was decided to take a good spell before making another attempt. While we were doing this the rations were getting very short, and we began to cat nardoo the same as the blacks.
They sat down to consider their position, and Burke said he had heard that the natives of Cooper's Creek lived chiefly on the seed of a plant which they called nardoo; so that, if they could only find a native tribe, they might, perhaps, learn to find sufficient subsistence from the soil around them.
This he thought was to provide a breakfast for the half-dozen natives who sat around; but to his astonishment they made him eat the whole lot, while they sat by extracting the bones. Afterwards a supply of nardoo was given him; at which he ate until he could eat no more. The blacks then asked him to stay the night with them; but as he was anxious to rejoin Burke and King, he went on.
In a few days things were so bad that Wills, who was getting worse all the time and suffering great pain, persuaded Mr. Burke and I to go up the creek, while we had strength, and look for the blacks, as our only chance of life. We didn't like the idea of separating, but it seemed to be our only chance, so we made him some nardoo bread, and left it, with a billy of water, beside him, and went away.
The blackfellow then described minutely the different waters passed by Burke, and the way the men lived on the seeds of the nardoo plant, which he must have heard of from other natives. After waiting a little over a month, Mr. Hodgkinson returned, and brought back with him the news of Howitt's success in finding King.
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