rt of
the plain that was burned. The plain extended a great distance to the
westward, and in crossing it one of our horses knocked up and could
travel no longer; Mr. Kennedy ordered him to be bled, and we not liking
to lose the blood, boiled it as a blood-pudding with a little flour, and
in the situation we were, we enjoyed it very much.

October 3.

We killed the horse this morning as he was not able to stand, and dried
the meat to carry with us; we made a small stage of saplings on which to
dry the meat, which was cut off close to the bone as clean as possible,
and then cut in thin slices, and laid on the stage in the sun to dry, and
the sun being very hot, it dried well; the heart, liver, and kidneys were
parboiled, and cut up fine, and mixed with the blood of the horse and
about three pounds of flour; they made four puddings, with which, after
they had boiled about four hours, we satisfied our appetites better than
we had been able to do for some time: it was served up in the same manner
as our usual rations, in equal parts, and each man had a right to reserve
a portion of his mess till the next day, but very little was saved. Mr.
Kennedy found that it was even necessary to have the horseflesh watched
whilst drying, finding that two or three of the party had secreted small
quantities amongst their clothes; such precautions were quite necessary,
as well in justice to the whole of the party, as to keep up the strength
of all, which seemed to be very fast declining. At night we made a fire
to smoke the meat, and to destroy the maggots, which were very numerous
in it; we packed the meat in empty flour bags.

October 4.

We proceeded northward over small sandy plains, covered with annual
grass, which was now very much withered, and through belts of dwarf bushy
Melaleucas and Banksias. We were not far from Princess Charlotte's Bay,
Jane's Table Land being in sight. We came to the side of a salt lagoon,
very nearly dry; we found it covered with salt, of which we took about 20
pounds, which was as much as we could carry, but even this was a very
seasonable help; we rubbed about two pounds of it into our meat. We
encamped by a small creek, but the water was brackish, and not being able
to find any other we were obliged to make use of it. One of our horses
was slightly hurt by a stump of a mangrove tree. All we got from the
horse we last killed was sixty-five pounds of meat.

October 5 and 6.

We travelled over sandy s