Had we done so we should have found and rescued King, and we might have been in time to save Burke and Wills also; but Conn would not agree to go.

It is true we were nearly starved as it was, and might have been entirely starved had we gone there, but by good fortune we met and shot a stray bullock that had wandered from the Darling, and this happy chance saved our lives.

I may here remark that poor Conn and two other exploring comrades of those days, named Curlewis and McCulloch, were all subsequently, not only killed but partly eaten by the wild natives of Australia--Conn in a place near Cooktown on the Queensland coast, and Curlewis and McCulloch on the Paroo River in New South Wales in 1862.

When we were together we had many very narrow escapes from death, and I have had several similar experiences since those days.

Howitt on his arrival at Cooper's Creek was informed by the natives that a white man was alive with them, and thus John King, the sole survivor, was rescued.
Between 1860-65 several short expeditions were carried on in Western Australia by Frank Gregory, Lefroy, Robinson, and Hunt; while upon the eastern side of Australia, the Brothers Jardine successfully explored and took a mob of cattle through the region that proved so fatal to Kennedy and his companions in 1848.