.

During the second watch last night our lives depended on the vigilance of
our watchmen. The blacks came up and probably would have overpowered us
if they had found all asleep; but Jemmy the native trooper, who always
keeps his watch well, awoke us, and all of our party except one
discharged their guns in the direction from where we heard the blacks. I
reserved my charge to shoot at them when I caught sight of them, which I
did not succeed in doing until after daylight. We set off two sky-rockets
but they did not go up well because they were bruised or because the
sticks we attached to them were unsuitable. When the first rocket
exploded it made the blacks laugh; at the explosion of the second we did
not hear them do so, as they had probably retired to some distance. After
the conduct of the blacks last night, and as they approached Gregory's
party in a similar way in the same neighbourhood, I fully intended to
shoot at them if we had a chance; but this morning, although three
approached to within one hundred yards of us while we were eating our
breakfast, I did not fire at them until Jemmy had warned them of our
hostile feeling towards them, and until they, instead of attending to the
warning they had received to be off, got most of their companions, who
were heavily loaded with clubs and throwing-sticks, to approach within
about the same distance of our position. I then gave the word and we
fired at them. The discharge wounded one and made the rest retire. Some
of us followed them up as far as the horses and again fired, and shot the
one who had been wounded previously. Afterwards Jackey slightly wounded
another when Jemmy and he went for the horses. Perhaps these blacks, as
they said they had visited the settled country, may have had a part in
the massacre of the Wills family. We followed the river up today for
about eighteen miles. About sixteen miles of the distance was along the
western bank. On that side the country is inferior and the place is
thickly wooded with western-wood acacia. Near sunset we crossed several
channels of the river. There was a change in the character of the country
when we left the northern bank; the ridges were sandy, caused, I judged,
by the junction of the Alice River, which I was afraid of following up in
mistake for the Barcoo River. We were not certainly, according to the
chart, so far to the northward as it; but Mr. Gregory discovered when he
went through the country that the north