per every man of the party ate heartily of it, and
afterwards each one claimed his share of the mess with great avidity. The
country to the north and north-west--the course we intended to
pursue--looking very rugged and broken, we were discouraged from
proceeding further this day, as the weak state of our horses prevented us
making almost any progress. We therefore camped by the side of a small
rocky creek, winding through the mountains in all directions.

August 18.

Shortly after starting this morning we crossed a creek, running
south-west, with a few arborescent Callistemons growing out of the rocks
here and there. The horse which Mr. Wall had been riding had grown so
weak that it was unable to travel, even with nothing to carry but the
saddle. As we were passing along the side of a hill, he fell and rolled
down into a gully. Being quite a young horse we thought he might regain
strength, and did not like to kill him, so we left him and proceeded to
find a good place for camping, which we did after travelling about four
miles in the north-west direction, by the side of a fine river, with
steep reedy banks, lined with large casuarinas and flooded-gum trees, and
abundance of grass growing in the valley of the river. At this camp the
feet of our horses were all carefully examined by Costigan, who was a
blacksmith: it was also his duty to mark the number of each of our camps
on some adjacent tree.

August 19.

Wall rode back to see if he could bring up the horse we had left behind,
but on reaching the spot found him dead; one of our kangaroo-dogs had
also stopped behind by the horse, being unable to follow us to the camp.
We had the good luck to succeed in catching several fish in the river,
and, what was better, shot a fine wallaby, which saved us another sheep.
We had all along been particularly unfortunate in getting anything from
the bush to add to our mess, not having been able either to shoot or
catch anything for some time past except a few pigeons and two or three
brown hawks.

The river by which we were camped was running west by south: below our
camp it was not nearly so wide as at the spot where we came upon it.
Where it turned through the hills its banks were rocky and steep, and the
bed narrow, but running rapidly. The hills here, as well as the valley of
the river, were well covered with grass. The position of the camp was
about 17 degrees 30 minutes south latitude, 145 degrees 12 minutes east
longitud