The New International Encyclopædia/Leichhardt, Ludwig

LEICHHARDT, līK'härt, Ludwig (1813-48?). A German explorer, born at Trebatsch, Province of Brandenburg. Prussia, After studying at Göttingen and Berlin, he traveled in Italy, France, and England, and in 1841 went to Australia. Here he at once began the geological investigations which he later described in his Contributions to the Geology of Australia. In 1844 he set out on his second expedition to Australia, and with about seven companions traveled from Moreton Bay, on the eastern coast, through Queensland, to Port Essington. in the extreme north of the continent. After accomplishing this journey, in which he covered about 2000 miles, in sixteen months, Leichhardt returned to Sydney and published the results of his expediition in his Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia from Moreton Bay to Port Essington (1846). At the close of that year he started on his last trip, in which he proposed to go from Moreton Bay across the central part of the continent from east to west. The last information received from him was sent from Macpherson's Station on the Cogoon River, on April 3, 1848. No less than five relief expeditions were organized in 1851-65, but these failed to discover a trace of the lost explorer, whose disappearance remains unexplained. A district or grand division of Queensland, a county of New South Wales, and a town in Cumberland County, N. S. W., not far from Sydney, were named in his honor. Consult the study by Zuchold (Leipzig, 1856).