When I left Thorkill's grave I made a course as near as I could for the Cape gold-field. This place I found almost deserted, as most of the diggers had left for the Palmer. The few people who remained there had seemingly nothing else to speak about but the fabulous richness of that field, and they were all deploring each his untoward circumstances which kept him from going thither. And so it came to pass that, while gradually recovering my spirits, I made up my mind to go to the Palmer too. But to go to the Palmer was at that time easier said than done. The Palmer gold-fields lay somewhere in a totally unexplored country, and none had been known to reach the Palmer from the Cape after the commencement of the wet season. Many unsuccessful attempts had been made, and the returned parties spoke loudly of the "impossibilities" on the road, such as swollen rivers, swamps, marshes, mountains, blacks, and what not besides; and what seemed to me the worst, no supplies of any kind were to be found on the fields. One had simply to carry with him rations sufficient to last until he returned. Add to this that a pint pot full of flour cost half-a-crown on the Cape, with other things at a proportionate rate, and it made me decide another way.

A new port had been opened on the coast by the shipping companies as the most feasible spot from which to reach the Palmer. The name of this place was Cooktown on the Endeavour River; and the spot is identical with a place mentioned in Captain Cook's travels, where he ran his ship, the Endeavour, ashore to carry out some necessary repairs to that vessel. To get to Cooktown from the Cape I should first have to go to Townsville and thence take ship to Cooktown. Although the distance from the Cape to Townsville was as great as from the Cape to the Palmer, yet, as it was possible to travel the one road and not the other, I decided to go there, and from that port take ship to Cooktown, whence after having obtained supplies, I would try to reach the Palmer.

I will not tire the reader by describing my journey to Townsville. My horses were well rested and in good mettle, and I let them trot out every day, so that I reached the coast very quickly. I found Townsville crowded with people who wanted to go to the Palmer. The steamers could not take them fast enough, and in trying to secure a passage for myself and my horses I was disappointed time after time. Money, however, was flying about all over the place. I was offered work in several quarters—in fact I was nearly implored to take it up for fifteen shillings a day, or there was piecework, by which I could easily have earned double that amount, but, of course, I could not think of it. At last I obtained a passage in a schooner which had been fitted up for the voyage. There was accommodation below decks for forty horses, and fully that number were hoisted on board. On the deck was accommodation for as many passengers as could find standing room, and I think there must have been over a hundred people altogether. Indeed, we were so crowded that, if the skipper had a right to complain of anything, it certainly could not be that he had not a full cargo. I paid five pounds apiece for the passage of the horses and two pounds ten shillings for myself. We had to find our own forage, too, for the horses, and also to provide our own food. Water, however, the skipper had to find himself—no light matter on so small a ship. We were supposed to make the run in forty-eight hours, and carried water enough for double that time. I had corn and hay to last my horses for a fortnight, but some of the others had scarcely any fodder. At last we started, and when the little steamer which hauled us out of the creek had cast us off, it was proved to my entire satisfaction that my run of bad luck was not yet at an end. A strong wind was blowing, but although the ship was tearing through the water at a terrible rate, yet we did not make real way, as the wind was straight against us. It may seem strange that we should start with such an adverse wind, but once the horses were on board the skipper had to go. The first evening we were out the captain and mate fought and nearly knocked each other into the sea. I mention this, however, only because I remember it; I don't think our troublesome journey was due to neglect or bad seamanship, but the wind was against us, and kept so day after day until at last it blew a perfect hurricane. The horses, of course, suffered very much. At one time they would stand nearly on their heads, at another, the other way, now on one side, then on the other, as the ship was jerking up and down. I was working down below with my two horses all the time, trying to ease them all I could. I tied my tent, clothes and blankets round about the stalls to lessen the force of the knocks a little for them. All the horses, however, did not fare so well as that, for their masters themselves were, for the most part, lying in a helpless condition up on deck, and the air below was so foul that it took a good pair of lungs to endure it. The horses soon began to die off, too; and to haul the poor dead brutes up and throw them overboard took us all our time, seeing that very few of us were capable of such work. Upon deck it was indeed a sight. Some were completely gone with sea-sickness and had tied themselves to the bulwarks, others were lying "yarning" and laughing as if nothing were the matter. Many of these men must have known that even if the ship could weather the storm, yet with the death of their horses all hope of a successful journey was at an end for them. Yet one heard no complaint; and I should like here to pay this compliment to Britishers: that, whether English, Scotch, or Irish, they are, as a rule, brave men. Ours was not a momentary suffering either. It was a constant drenching with the waves, day after day. The horses, our most valuable property, hauled overboard as fast sometimes as we could get them up, and our own lives in constant danger! Yet no one complained. They would "yarn," laugh, or crack jokes all day long. The only exceptions to this rule, I am sorry to say, although I hope they were not typical, were two Danes who had come on board. One of them had informed me as soon as we left Townsville that he intended to run away from his wife who lived there. Now, when the storm was blowing, he became intensely religious and declared it to be a punishment from Heaven for his wickedness and he made me most sacred promises, one after the other, that he would return to her bosom if only God would spare him this time. The other declared the ship to be a regular pirate craft and Queensland an accursed country. I had to cook for them both, hand them their food, and cheer up their spirits all the way. One day we spied a large steamer flying the flag of distress. She came from the south too, and was, like ourselves, trying to reach Cooktown. As she came labouring through the waves we saw that it was the Lord Ashley. The deck was black with people and I do not know how many hundred horses. This heavy deck-cargo caused the ship to rock so that it looked as if it were about capsizing every time it lurched over. Two of her masts were already overboard, and as our schooner ran past her we saw the people engaged in throwing the horses overboard alive. Nearly all the horses were sacrificed in this manner. To see the poor brutes try to swim after the steamer or the schooner was heartrending. We on the schooner could give no assistance; indeed, after all, the steamer was better off than ourselves, insomuch that it kept on its way while the schooner had to tear up and down and to do its best not to be blown south again. When we at last reached Cooktown, some days after, the Lord Ashley was lying there; but it was her last journey. She was so knocked about that, to the best of my belief, she was sold as lumber afterwards. All our water was now used up, and we had either to try to effect a landing or go south again. As the mate declared he knew a place on the coast just where we were, where there was a fresh-water creek, it was decided to call for volunteers among the passengers to man the boat and get some water. As I had two horses on board and was not sea-sick, I declared myself ready to make one. There were six oars to be manned. The other five volunteers, although passengers, were yet old sailors. The mate was to take the helm. Before the boat was lowered great care was taken to lash the empty casks in their proper position and to have everything in order. Then the captain took the wheel and ran the schooner in towards the land further than customary when we tacked. As we turned the boat was lowered. The men and I jumped down. Off flew the ship: it seemed miles before I realized that it was gone. And we in the boat—talk about the big swing at home in Tivoli; that was only child's play to the rocking we now had! My hat blew off and flew towards Townsville; my hair, and even my shirt, were trying hard to follow! One could scarcely get the oars in the water. But, in spite of all, we paddled as best we could, and shortly after were inside a little harbour, where the water was comparatively smooth and where we effected a landing. How peaceful and quiet it all seemed here under the mountain. I felt, as I trod the firm soil under my feet, that I should never make a good sailor, and it was a terror to me how we were ever to reach the schooner again. We rolled the casks up to the little creek and filled them. The mate said he had been there some years before when he was with a New Guinea expedition. As we were roaming about, waiting for the right moment to get out again, we found a lot of wreckage, old rotten spars, a cabin door, &c. Then we came on the skeleton of a man, not all together, but scattered about. There were also remains of some old clothes, and we found a purse with silver in it, something less than a pound. The mate declared this money to be an infallible charm, and suggested that we should each take a piece and say nothing about it. There were only six pieces of money, and we were seven to share it. No one would stand out for any consideration, so we drew lots. I secured a two-shilling piece, and, whether for good or for bad luck, I have it yet, and used to carry it for years in the most approved fashion round my neck. We had no tools with us, so we could not bury the bones. There they lie, perhaps even yet, the remains of another "missing friend." We came on board the schooner again somehow. Opinions differed much amongst us as to why we had not been drowned, and no verdict was arrived at. The mate said it was the charms we carried which had done it, others said that God held His hand over us, but the one who had no charm said it was because we were the very refuse of the devil. I express no opinion myself, only that it was certainly surprising. As the storm gradually veered round a little we reached Cooktown. Out of the forty horses only sixteen were alive; one of mine was dead, and the other did not look as if it could live long after I got it out of the ship, yet it gradually came round and proved a very good horse afterwards.

Cooktown is now reckoned among the old-established towns of Queensland, but when I landed there it looked wild enough. To describe it I ask the reader to think of a fair in the Old Country, leaving out the monkeys and merry-go-rounds. There were some thousands of people all camped out in tents. Those who intended to start business in Cooktown had pegged out plots of ground in the main street and run up large tents or corrugated iron structures in which all sorts of merchandise was sold cheap enough. But the wet season kept on, and there was no communication with the Palmer. People left town to go there every day in the rain and slush, but many returned saying it was no use trying, as the rivers could not be crossed. There was at that time a very mixed lot of people in Cooktown. All the loafers, pickpockets, and card-sharpers seemed to have trooped in from Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne, looking for the gold in other people's pockets, and the robbing of tents was an everyday occurrence. Then, although it had been made known far and wide that any one who wanted to go to the Palmer must either starve or carry six months' rations with him, still many destitute and good-for-nothing people could also be seen wherever one looked: these form a class of men as easily distinguished from the bona fide miners as if they belonged altogether to another species. No work of any kind was going on for more than one-tenth of the people who looked for employment, and any one who wanted a man might easily get him for his "tucker." I believe one could have got them to work all day for their dinner alone. Men would walk about among the tents in droves, and wherever they saw rations there they would beg. While this was the true state of affairs in Cooktown just then, I remember well standing outside the newspaper office, reading the paper, the leading article in which described in glowing terms the bustle and activity going on in this rising city, and declared that any man who could lift a hammer was welcome to a pound sterling a day! Of course I did not look for any work, so I did not care. There was also a great deal of sickness, especially dysentery, and the doctors required cash down before they would even look at any one. If one took a stroll up among the tents, it was a common, indeed an inevitable, sight to see men lying helpless, writhing with pain on the ground, some of them bellowing out for pity or mercy. Very little pity or help, as a rule, did they get. Men would pass such a poor object with the greatest apathy, or at most go up to him and give good advice, such as that he ought to be ashamed of lying there and ought to try and crawl into the tent again! Such was life in Cooktown during the first "rush" there to any Queensland gold-fields.

I had not at that time got much money. If my second horse had lived, I should have been, as I thought, all right; but as horses worth six or seven pounds could not be bought under thirty or forty pounds, I could not buy another to replace the one I had lost, and had therefore to be content with one. So one day I loaded up my horse with rations and went on the road. As I was going to the Palmer, where money was of no value whatever, and as everything depended on my being able to carry a sufficiency of provisions, I had bought the best of everything regardless of cost. I had cocoa, extract of beef to make soup of, preserved meat and such like in large quantity. Then I had tea, sugar, and one hundred and fifty pounds of flour. My wardrobe, on the other hand, was not extensive. It consisted of one shirt, over and above that I wore. Fifty pounds of my flour with the tent, half a blanket, billy-can, pint pot, knife, gun, &c., I carried on my own back; the remainder, including spade and basin, I strapped on the back of the horse. I had then only a few shillings left of all my money when I started, but going through the town on my road out the burden on my back began already to feel heavy. I therefore thought it wise to carry no unnecessary loads, and seeing some fellows standing in the street who looked as if they needed some refreshment, I called them together and had a big "shout" in a public-house as far as the money would go. That relieved my mind and my pocket!

The road, if it might be called one, was really a track or belt of morass, some ten chains wide, in which one had to wade at times up to the knees. I was prepared to endure great hardships; but to understand the suffering to man and horse in dragging oneself along that road one must have tried it for himself. Twice that day the horse and I got bogged. To get clear again I had first to crawl on my hands and knees with part of my own load up to some fallen log and deposit it there, then back to the horse for more. When the horse was quite unloaded, I had to take it round the neck and let it use me as a sort of purchase by which to work itself out. Then load it again and wade along. I made eight miles that day, and I knew that no one who left Cooktown with me came so far. At the eighth mile there was a large camp of diggers, who said they could get no further nor yet back to Cooktown. I should have remained there; but as I saw next morning some prepare to get a little further, I started with them, and soon left them behind too. That day and the next the road was better although still very bad. I crossed a river the third evening I was out. It was as much as I could do to get over, and, as in the night it began to pour with rain, I concluded, what really proved to be the case, that the creek would rise and so effectually cut off my retreat. The next day the road was worse than ever. The horse got bogged time after time, and I was myself on the eve of being knocked up. The whole road so far, almost ever since I had left Cooktown, was strewn with clothes, boots, saddles, rations, in such quantities that there would have been enough to have opened a good store with if one could have got it all together. I had also passed at least a score of dead horses, sticking in the mud with the saddles, and, in some cases, rations on them; and I met scores of men, who, having thrown everything away, were struggling to reach Cooktown again on foot. But with dogged obstinacy I kept on trying to accomplish the impossible. At last the poor horse got bogged again worse than ever. I could not get him out. He looked so pitifully at me! I am sure it knew the predicament we were both in. I struggled and tried hard to get it out, but I could not. As it settled deeper and deeper into the quagmire I thought I might as well finish his sufferings and my own. So I put my gun to his ear and shot him.

There I stood in the pouring rain alongside the dead horse, full of anger with myself that I had not, by using more judgment, saved myself and my poor, faithful companion from such a hard fate. I am not poetically gifted, and do not understand the science of making much out of a little, so I cannot say how miserable I felt. Yet it is nevertheless true that I was ready to burst with grief. I was wet through, and had been so all day, nor had I anything dry to put on. Evening was coming on too. Up and down the "road" there was nothing but a quagmire, into which I sank to the knees whenever I moved. Here also lay my hopes of redeeming my fortunes. I know very well if I were placed in the same position now, I should not have strength either of body or mind to extricate myself. As it was, when I think of it now, after so many years, I can truly aver that I mourned for the horse more than for myself. I had met no travellers that day on account of the rain, but I knew I was about eight miles from the Normanby River, on both sides of which large bodies of miners were camped—those on my side being desirous of reaching the Palmer, and the camp on the other side being full of men who had come from the Palmer and wanted to go to Cooktown. But both parties were prevented from getting further as the Normanby River was in full flood and half a mile across.

I could not continue to stand looking at the dead horse. I felt a great longing to reach the other men that I might, by talking to them, forget a part of my own trouble in thinking of theirs, so I managed that evening, and with even a part of my goods, to reach the camp, and the next few days I devoted to fetching the remainder of my stores from where the dead horse was lying.

On the banks of the Normanby River there was at that time a sight which might well furnish food for reflection. I doubt if fiction could invent anything more strange. Several hundred men were camped on the south side of the river waiting for the flood to subside so that they might get over. We had rations in any quantity, but, speaking for myself, I can truthfully say, if the others were like me, we had no money. On the other side of the river was an equally large camp. The men there were the diggers who, when the first news of the Palmer broke out, had, before the wet season set in, gathered to the "rush" from the Etheridge, Gilbert, Charters Towers, Cape, and other outlying places, and who, having eaten their rations and gathered their gold, were now trying to get to Cooktown to purchase supplies. A perfect famine was raging over there. The country around is very poorly off for game; besides, they had no powder, and so they had been eating their horses, their dogs, and at last their boots! It is a fact that they used to boil their blucher boots for twenty-four hours and eat them with weeds! It takes something to make a Queensland miner lie down to die, yet it was the general opinion among men who had been to all the Victorian and New Zealand "rushes," that they had never suffered such hardship before or seen country so void of game or life of any sort.

There we were, looking across at one another—they shaking their gold-purses at us, and we showing them the flour-bags. Two came across to us. The way they managed was this: first they took off the rag or two which yet served them for clothes and strapped them on to the horse, then getting on the horse and forcing it into the water it would soon be borne with the current down the stream; they would then slip off, and getting hold of the tail with one hand swim with the other. They both managed to cross, but it looked so desperate an undertaking that the others did not venture. The two men who came over brought the first reliable news from the Palmer for a long time, and were besieged with questions. As I do not care to return to the matter again, I will say here that among the tales of suffering on the Palmer by the first batch of diggers, was that of one of my shipmates from home, who had arrived there from the Etheridge, and who, while looking for gold in one of the tributaries to the Palmer, had been cut off from the main camp by the river rising so that he could not cross to get away. His dead body was found in his tent after the wet season. He had died of hunger, yet under his head was a bag with eighteen pounds' weight of gold in it. Poor fellow! the last time I saw him was in Port Denison, the first year I was in the country; he had then earned five pounds sterling, and had come into town to get it sent home to his father and mother.

On our side of the river we passed the time as best we could. There was a large band of German musicians, and I joined them with my flute, which I always carried. It really seemed strange, in the heart of the wilderness, where a few months before no white man had ever put his foot, to hear the tones of Strauss or Offenbach. As a general thing, though, men would sit in their tents while the rain came pouring down in sheets of water. At night we suffered very much from mosquitoes, and in the daytime from flies, the common little house-fly, which was a perfect nuisance all day. Dear reader, I know you expect of me that the least I can do for you who have followed my fortunes so far is to tell you now how I somehow proceeded to the Palmer, and there in a month or two accumulated at least twenty thousand ounces of gold, with which I returned and got married to some nobleman's daughter. I should not be sorry to write this if I only had the gold somewhere handy, but as you no doubt would, after all, prefer the truth, whatever it is, I must confess that I could not at all see my way to go on any further. When the weather settled and people began to cross the river I had a good look at the poor emaciated fellows who came across, some of them with very little gold, and all of them more or less broken in health. Then I began to ask myself whether the game was worth the candle. The Germans who constituted the band offered to take me as mate in their party, and to put my rations on their horses; and for that I was greatly obliged to them, but I seemed all at once to have taken such a dislike to roaming about, and was picturing to myself the comfort I could have had and the sum of money I might have saved by constant employment at my trade, that I refused their kind offer, and instead of going on towards the Palmer I sold my rations for a good price and returned to Cooktown.