Kennedy landed from the Tam o’Shanter at the little point that still bears the jovial name, and bade farewell to Owen Stanley in good spirits, and with no dread premonitions.  He was fresh from the sun-scorched plains of the interior, and would confidently confront whatever might lie before him.  Scrub and swampy country delayed him on his way to the higher land at the foot of the range, where he had hoped to find better travelling country; but the foothills were serried with ravines and gullies, and the sides clothed with the ever-present jungle.  The horses and sheep, unaccustomed to the sour grasses of the coast lands of northern Australia, pined and rapidly wasted away.  Their troubles were augmented by acts of annoyance, and on one unfortunate occasion, of open hostility on the part of the blacks.

By the 18th of July, a little over six weeks after they had left Rockingham Bay, the sheep had been reduced from one hundred to fifty, and the horses began to fail so rapidly that they had to abandon the carts, while the men were becoming completely exhausted from the endless cutting and hacking of the scrub.  At length they surmounted the range, the backbone of the peninsula, and on the western slope, amid the heads of the rivers flowing into the Gulf of Carpentaria, made better progress.  Kennedy, however, adhered to his instructions to examine the eastern slope, and recrossed the watershed, where troubles again came thick upon him.  One after another the horses began to give in, and owing to the storekeeper’s mismanagement, they were nearly out of provisions.  On the 9th of December they reached Weymouth Bay, and Kennedy determined to form a stationary camp, and leaving there the main body of his men, push forward to Port Albany, whence he would send back the schooner that was awaiting them with relief.  He selected seven men whom he left in charge of Carron, the naturalist, and with three men and the heroic Jacky-Jacky, an aboriginal of New South Wales, he pushed on —­ to his death.

Before the departure the last sheep was slaughtered, and its lean and miserable carcase shared between the two parties; and with Carron, Kennedy ascended a hill that commanded a prospect of the country lying to the north, but could see nothing but rugged hills and black scrub.  He confided only to Carron his gloomy foreboding that he would never reach Albany, so disheartened were both the men by the prospect.  And throughout those long weeks of starvation that ensued, Carron refrained from crushing all hope in his comrades by communicating to them Kennedy’s despair of relief.