parted with mutual regret; our friendship having been cemented by a similarity of sentiments and pursuits.
As this excellent officer and worthy man occupies so conspicuous a place in the preceding narrative, I think it may not be uninteresting to my readers to be informed of his untimely death.
He was returning to Sydney from King George's Sound, which had been given up to Captain Stirling, and, in obedience to orders from the Colonial Government, he was examining the coast in the vicinity of Encounter Bay, principally with the view of ascertaining whether any available communication existed between the River Murray (lately discovered by Captain Sturt) and the sea. While in the execution of this duty, he was barbarously murdered by the natives, and his mangled body thrown into the sea.
The melancholy intelligence was communicated to me in a letter from Dr. Davis, which having been mislaid, I transcribe the minute account of the sad catastrophe given by Captain Sturt[1], from the relation of my fellow-traveller, Mr. Kent.
"I have remarked (observes Captain Sturt), that there is a sand-hill to the eastward of the inlet (i. e. the communication between Lake Alexandrina and the sea), under which the tide runs strong, and the water is deep. Captain Barker judged the breadth of the
- ↑ Vide "Sturt's Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia," vol. ii. p. 239.
