The whole of the establishment there, testified
their pleasure at our return. On our arrival at the Peake our
reception by Mr. and Mrs. Blood at the telegraph station was most
gratifying. Mr. John Bagot also supplied us with many necessaries at
his cattle-station. The mail contractor had a light buggy here, and I
obtained a seat and was driven by him as far as the Blinman Copper
Mine, via Beltana, where I heard that my black boy Dick had died of
influenza at a camp of the semi-civilised natives near a hill called
by Eyre, Mount Northwest. From the Blinman I took the regular mail
coach and train nearly 300 miles to Adelaide. Mr. Tietkens and Jimmy
came behind and sold the remaining horses at the Blinman, where they
also took the coach and joined me in Adelaide a week later.
I have now but a few concluding remarks to make; for my second
expedition is at an end, and those of my readers who have followed my
wanderings are perhaps as glad to arrive at the end as I was. I may
truly say that for nearly twelve months I had been the well-wrought
slave not only of the sextant, the compass, and the pen, but of the
shovel, the axe, and the needle also. There had been a continual
strain on brain and muscle.
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