the delay. He met the missing party, who
were bringing bad news with them. Through carelessness in allowing the
grass round the camp to catch fire, half of their rations and nearly the
whole of their equipment had been burnt. In addition, one of the most
valuable of their horses had been poisoned. This terrible misfortune,
coming at such an early stage of their journey when they had all the
unknown country ahead of them, seriously imperilled the success of their
undertaking. But there was nothing to do but to bear it with what
equanimity they could muster.

The Cape York natives now seemed to rejoice that they had another party
of white men to dog to death. Once about twenty of them appeared about
sundown and boldly attacked the camp with showers of spears. Two days
afterwards, they surprised the younger Jardine when alone, and he had to
fight hard for his life. The creek they had been following down led them
on to the Staaten River, where the blacks succeeded in stampeding their
horses, and it was days before some of them were recovered.

On the 5th of December, they left this ill-omened river, and steered due
north. Bad luck still haunted them; tortured by flies, mosquitoes, and
sand-flies, their horses scattered and rambled incessantly. While the
brothers were absent, searching one day for the horses, the party at the
camp allowed the solitary mule to stray away with its pack on. The mule
was never found again, and it carried with it, in its pack, some of their
most necessary articles, reducing them nearly to the same state of
deprivation as their determined enemies, the aboriginals. Two more horses
went mad, through drinking salt water; one died, and the other was so ill
that he had to be abandoned. On the 13th of December they reached the
Mitchell River, not without having had another hot battle with the
blacks, who followed them day after day, watching for every opportunity
and displaying the same relentless hostility that they had formerly shown
to Kennedy. Whilst the party were on the Mitchell, the natives mustered
in force and fell upon the explorers with the greatest determination.
After a severe contest, in which heavy loss had been inflicted upon the
savages, they sullenly and reluctantly retired. From what was afterwards
gathered from the semi-civilised natives about Somerset, these tribes
followed the Jardines for nearly 400 miles. This perseverance and
inappeasable enmity had been equalled before only by