three-quarters-of-a-mile in width, running rapidly from the W.N.W.
Its banks were low and muddy, covered with a wide belt of dense
mangroves, its muddy and swollen waters carrying down quantities of
rubbish. This they correctly surmised to be the mouth of the
veritable "Escape" but Frank Jardine was again in error in supposing
it to be the same stream that they had left the cattle on. Seeing so
large a stream he naturally reverted to the idea that it had turned
on itself, and that their first exploration had stopped before
reaching the turning point. His case was dispiriting in the extreme.
The main camp was not more than 15 miles in latitude south of his
present position. The Settlement, the long-wished end of their
journey, could not be more than 20 to the North, yet his progress was
arrested by a broad and rapid river, to head the supposed bend of
which he had ineffectually travelled nearly 50 miles. His plan was
now to follow the Escape up in hopes of being able to cross at the
head of the tide, and so reach Somerset, but this, as will be seen,
was more easily planned than executed. Following up the course of
the river the way lay over a country which Alexander Jardine mentions
in his notes as "too bad to describe," pandanus swamps, vine scrubs,
and small creeks swollen by the rains to a swimmable depth,
succeeding one another along the whole stage. At the latter the
horses had always to be unpacked and their saddles taken over on the
heads of the party. Three hours were consumed in cutting their way
through the last of the vine scrubs, when they camped on the outside,
three of the horses being completely knocked up. The Brothers then
walked to the river in hopes of finding a crossing place. This
however, proved hopeless. A thick matted fringe of mangroves nearly
three miles wide intervened between them and its bank, through which
it was next to impossible to make any headway. Their supper to-night
was augmented by a lucky "find" during the day of thirteen scrub
turkeys' eggs, which, though they would scarcely have been
appreciated at an ordinary breakfast table, were very acceptable to
tired and hungry travellers existing principally on jerked beef.
Eating what yolk or white they contained, they plucked and roasted
the chicks as a "bonne-bouche." Fires had to be kept going day and
night to drive away, and protect the poor miserable horses from the
march and sand-flies by day, and mosquitoes by night.