ake the
most of our actual means, to acquit ourselves like men, and do our
utmost.

EXCURSION BY WATER TO PRINCE REGENT'S RIVER.

January 18.

Fortune smiled on us this morning in as far as she gave us a fine
daybreak, and at dawn we started for Hanover Bay, leaving a small party
at the encampment. After all the trouble I had taken to find a good route
for the horses, we still had a great deal to do to render it at all
practicable; we however all worked cheerfully and sturdily away at
burning the grass, moving rocks and fallen trees, etc., and thus, as it
were, fought our way through opposing obstacles to Hanover Bay, over a
distance of about four miles.

TROUBLE IN GETTING THE HORSES TO THE CAMP.

On arriving there I found Mr. Lushington already on shore and some of the
horses disembarked. They were not only well selected for the purpose, but
were generally in good condition. They had however two faults which could
not have been avoided, and these were that they were very small and
perfectly wild. By about two o'clock in the afternoon the whole
twenty-six had been swum ashore, and we started for the huts.

Our progress was however slow; for, as there were only a few of us, each
person was obliged to take charge of three or four of these untamed,
unbroken brutes. The mode we adopted was to fasten them together by long
ropes so that the number each man led could follow in a line; but, being
wholly unused to this kind of discipline, they strenuously resisted it,
biting and kicking at one another with the greatest ferocity; and as they
were chiefly very courageous little entire horses, a variety of spirited
contests took place, much to their own satisfaction, but to my infinite
chagrin. Some of the men who were not much accustomed to horses regarded
these wild ponies as being but little better than savage monsters, with
whom it was dangerous to have anything to do; and, being thus rather
afraid of them, treated them very cruelly, kicking them often with great
violence whenever I for a moment looked away, and thus naturally
rendering the ponies still more wild.

But even when we did induce these brutes to move along pacifically they
would not follow one another in a line, but all strove to go in different
directions, and, as our road lay through a rocky forest, the consequence
of this pulling was that the connecting ropes kept on getting entangled
in rocks and trees; indeed there was scarcely an instance of two of t