SOUTH AUSTRALIA.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume I, Issue 13, 4 January 1845, Page 3

SOUTH AUSTRALIA.

Although the Elizabeth brings no mail for this place, yet from the information with which we have been favoured by Captain Tippley and the passengers, and from the Register. of the 6th instant, which we have also obtained from these gentlemen, we are enabled to furnish our readers with the folWing particulars :—: — Mr. Darke's exploring party arrived in Adelaide on the morning of the day on which the Elizabeth sailed, and reported the unfortunate death of their leader at the hands of the natives. The following account of the murder may be relied upon as strictly correct, having been kindly given us by a gentleman to whom one of Mr. Darke's party communicated it : — " Mr. Darke, who condacted the exploring expedition in the Port Lincoln district, had completed the objects of his mission most successfully, and was on the point of returning ; he and his party had been short of water and had been supplied by some natives

with whom they were on very friendly terms. One morning Mr. Darke walked a very .few yards from the camp without arms, and saw a native watching him from behind a bush. He immediately called out to his men, who ran towards him just in time to see several spears thrown at him, three of which took effect. The natives immediately ran, and some shots were fired, but the result is not known. Mr. Darke died two days after. The men who were with him appear confident that the murderers were the men who supplied the party with water and had been very liberally rewarded. From the following article from the Register of the 6th instant, it will be seen that the report of a dreadful massacre, was without foundation : — The affair of the massacre, reported in some of our former numbers, turns out to be nothing more than some apocryphal version of Major Mitchell's visit to that spot some eight or ten years ago,' mixed up in all probability with some attack or other on some party of squatters, who have passed the New "South Wales boundaries, and the unnecessary alarm, which has been raised on the subject, is said to have arisen from a mis-, apprehension of the meaning of the natives, owing to the entire ignorance of their language. Captain Sturt was following up the Darling, and speaks of the extent and quality of the soil in the highest terms. A discovery has been made from some ranges near, of an immense body of water studded with islands, and which the discoverer presumes to be an iuland sea. The party was preparing to cross the ranges for the purpose of obtaining more certain information. A large overland party, said to number eighty or a hundred persons, with four drays, proceeding from Port Phillip to Adelaide, were seen on the 2nd instant, near the head Lake Albert. Some men have come up from the Jane Flazman, who report that they have been unsuccessful in their search for Mr. Haynes and party. Near Cape Northumberland tljey had found the wreck of a vessel, called the Isabella, a whaler from Hobart Town," with the masts cut away, and a few miles further on they found three whale-boats. It was supposed that the crew had gone overland to Portland. — South Australian.