FROM MELBOURNE TO THE GULF OF CARPENTARIA.
FROM THE JOURNALS AND LETTERS OF WILLIAM JOHN WILLS
A life terminating before it had reached its meridian, can scarcely be expected to furnish materials for an extended biography.
But the important position held by my late son, as second in command in what is now so well-known as the Burke and Wills Exploring Expedition across the Island Continent of Australia; the complicated duties he undertook as Astronomer, Topographer, Journalist, and Surveyor; the persevering skill with which he discharged them, suggesting and regulating the march of the party through a waste of eighteen hundred miles, previously untrodden by European feet; his courage, patience, and heroic death; his self-denial in desiring to be left alone in the desert with scarcely a hope of rescue, that his companions might find a chance for themselves;–these claims on public attention demand that his name should be handed down to posterity in something more than a mere obituary record, or an official acknowledgment of services.
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