ssiduity either to a desire to obtain for us some of
the juice, which would have been creditable to their feelings; or to the
necessity for serving some more powerful native who had set them to that
work. One had gone, apparently to call the tribe, so I continued my
journey without further delay. We soon regained our track of the first
day, and I followed it with some impatience back to the camp.

HORSES REACH THE CAMP WITH GREAT DIFFICULTY.

My horse had been ill on the second day, and as this was the third on
which it, as well as the others, had gone without water, they were so
weak that, had we been retarded by any accident another night in the
bush, we must have lost them all. They could be driven on only with
difficulty, nevertheless we reached the camp before sunset.

PART OF MR. CUNNINGHAM'S COAT FOUND.

The tidings brought by the men sent after Mr. Cunningham's footsteps were
still most unsatisfactory. They had followed the river bed back for the
first twelve miles from our camp without finding in it a single pond.
They had traced the continuation of his track to where it disappeared
near some recent fires where many natives had been encamped. Near one of
these fires they found a portion of the skirt or selvage of Mr.
Cunningham's coat; numerous small fragments of his map of the colony;
and, in the hollow of a tree, some yellow printed paper in which he used
to carry the map. The men examined the ground for half a mile all around
without finding more of his footsteps, or any traces of him besides those
mentioned. It was possible and indeed, as I then thought, probable, that
having been deprived by the natives of his coat, he might have escaped
from them by going northward towards some of the various cattle stations
on the Macquarie. I learnt that when the men returned with these vestiges
of poor Cunningham, there was great alarm amongst the natives, and
movements by night, when the greater part of the tribe decamped, and
amongst them the fellow with the handkerchief who never again appeared.
The chief, or king (as our people called him) continued with us, and
seemed quite unconscious of anything wrong. This tribe seemed too far
from the place where the native camp had been to be suspected of any
participation in the ill treatment with which we had too much reason to
fear Mr. Cunningham had met. As we had no language to explain even that
one of our party was missing, I could only hope that, by treating these