animal was visible
beyond it; and as it was difficult otherwise to account for his own
vigorous step, after an abstinence of three days and three nights. I then
regretted that I had not at the time examined the scrub but, when we were
at his last camp (the trees on the plain) we were most interested in Mr.
Cunningham's further course.

This we traced more than two miles, during which he had never stopped,
even to look behind towards the spot where, had he left his horse, he
might still have seen him. Having at length lost the track on some very
hard ground we exhausted the day in a vain search for it.

MR. LARMER MEETS A TRIBE.

On returning to the camp I found that Mr. Larmer, whom I had sent with
two armed men down the Bogan, had nearly been surrounded, at only three
miles from our camp, by a tribe of natives carrying spears. Amongst these
were two who had been with us on the previous day, and who called to the
others to keep back. They told Mr. Larmer that they had seen Mr.
Cunningham's track in several parts of the bed of the Bogan; that he had
not been killed but had gone to the westward (pointing down the Bogan)
with the Myall (i.e. wild) Blackfellows. Thus we had reason to hope that
our friend had at least escaped the fate of his unfortunate horse by
reaching the Bogan. This was what we wished; but no one could have
supposed that he would have followed the river downwards, into the jaws
of the wild natives, rather than upwards. His movements show that he
believed he had deviated to the eastward of our route rather than to the
westward; and this mistake accounts for his having gone down the Bogan.

Had he not pursued that fatal course, or had he killed the horse rather
than the dog, and remained stationary, his life would have been saved.
The result of our twelve days' delay and search was only the discovery
that, had we pursued our journey down the Bogan, Mr. Cunningham would
have fallen in with our track and rejoined us; and that, while we halted
for him, he had gone ahead of us, and out of reach.

THE FOOTSTEPS TRACED INTO THE CHANNEL OF THE BOGAN.

April 30.

I put the party in movement along the left bank of the Bogan, its general
course being north-west, and about five miles from our camp we crossed
the same solitary line of shoe-marks, seen the day before, and still
going due north! With sanguine hopes we traced it to a pond in the bed of
the river, and the two steps by which Mr. Cunningham first rea