ption. The natives, though occasionally seen, generally
kept away from us during the time we were in depot. One old man alone
(called Mumma) came up to our camp, and remained with us for
several days; he was one of the few who had accompanied us so far from
the neighbourhood of Denial Bay, and seemed to have taken a great fancy
to us. We now endeavoured to reward him for his former services, by
giving him a red shirt, a blanket, and a tomahawk, and whenever we got
our meals he joined us, eating and drinking readily any thing we gave
him--tea, broth, pease soup, mutton, salt pork, rice, damper, sugar,
dried fruits, were all alike to him, nothing came amiss, and he appeared
to grow better in condition every day.

At last he too got tired of remaining so long in one place; the novelty
had worn away, and packing up his things he left us. During the time this
man had been with us, I took the opportunity of ascertaining whether the
King George's Sound native, Wylie, could understand him, but I found he
could not. There were one or two words common to both, but the general
character, meaning, and sound of the two languages were so very different
upon comparison, that I could myself understand the old man much better
than Wylie could.

Whilst remaining in depot, the whole party were one day suddenly seized
with a severe attack of illness, accompanied with vomiting and violent
pain in the stomach, and I began to fear that we had unknowingly taken
some deleterious ingredient in our food, as all were seized in the same
way; this attack continued for several days, without our being able to
discover the cause of it, but at last by changing the sugar we were
using, we again got well. It appeared that a new bag of sugar had been
broached about the time we were first attacked, and upon inspecting it,
we found the bag quite wet--something or other of a deleterious character
having been spilled over it, and which had doubtless caused us the
inconvenience we experienced. Fortunately we had other sugar that had not
been so injured, and the loss of the damaged bag was not of great
consequence to us.

By the 23rd of February our preparations for entering upon our journey
were nearly all completed, the horses had eaten up all their bran and
corn, and were now in good condition; all our pack-saddles, saddles, and
harness were ready, our provisions were all packed, and every thing in
order for commencing the undertaking; there remained but to