ed, or the toil and privations
we continually experienced in the course of this expedition. My duty is,
simply to give a plain narrative of facts, which I have done with
fidelity, and with as much accuracy as circumstances would permit. Had we
found Robert Harris at the depot, I should have considered it unnecessary
to trespass longer on the patient reader, but as our return to that post
did not relieve us from our difficulties, it remains for me to carry on
the narrative of our proceedings to the time when we reached the upper
branches of the Morumbidgee.

DISAPPOINTED OF SUPPLIES.

The hopes that had buoyed up the spirits of the men, ceased to operate as
soon as they were discovered to have been ill founded. The most gloomy
ideas took possession of their minds, and they fancied that we had been
neglected, and that Harris had remained in Sydney. It was to no purpose
that I explained to them that my instructions did not bind Harris to come
beyond Pondebadgery, and that I was confident he was then encamped upon
that plain.

We had found the intricate navigation of the Morumbidgee infinitely more
distressing than the hard pulling up the open reaches of the Murray, for
we were obliged to haul the boat up between numberless trunks of trees,
an operation that exhausted the men much more than rowing. The river had
fallen below its former level, and rocks and logs were now exposed above
the water, over many of which the boat's keel must have grazed, as we
passed down with the current. I really shuddered frequently, at seeing
these complicated dangers, and I was at a loss to conceive how we could
have escaped them. The planks of our boat were so thin that if she had
struck forcibly against any one branch of the hundreds she must have
grazed, she would inevitably have been rent asunder from stem to stern.

COMPLETE EXHAUSTION OF THE MEN--ONE LOSES HIS SENSES.

The day after we passed the depot, on our return, we began to experience
the effects of the rains that had fallen in the mountains. The Morumbidgee
rose upon us six feet in one night, and poured along its turbid waters
with proportionate violence. For seventeen days we pulled against them
with determined perseverance, but human efforts, under privations such as
ours, tend to weaken themselves, and thus it was that the men began to
exhibit the effects of severe and unremitting toil. Our daily journeys
were short, and the head we made against the stream but trifling. The