On the 5th of December, they left this ill-omened river, and steered due north.  Bad luck still haunted them; tortured by flies, mosquitoes, and sand-flies, their horses scattered and rambled incessantly.  While the brothers were absent, searching one day for the horses, the party at the camp allowed the solitary mule to stray away with its pack on.  The mule was never found again, and it carried with it, in its pack, some of their most necessary articles, reducing them nearly to the same state of deprivation as their determined enemies, the aboriginals.  Two more horses went mad, through drinking salt water; one died, and the other was so ill that he had to be abandoned.  On the 13th of December they reached the Mitchell River, not without having had another hot battle with the blacks, who followed them day after day, watching for every opportunity and displaying the same relentless hostility that they had formerly shown to Kennedy.  Whilst the party were on the Mitchell, the natives mustered in force and fell upon the explorers with the greatest determination.  After a severe contest, in which heavy loss had been inflicted upon the savages, they sullenly and reluctantly retired.  From what was afterwards gathered from the semi-civilised natives about Somerset, these tribes followed the Jardines for nearly 400 miles.  This perseverance and inappeasable enmity had been equalled before only by the Darling natives.  It can be imagined how these incessant attacks, combined with the harassing nature of the country, gave the party all they could do to hold their own, and but for the prompt and plucky manner in which the attacks were met, not one of them would have survived.

After crossing the Mitchell, steering north, they got into poor country, thinly-grassed and badly-watered, with the natives still hanging on their flanks.  On the 28th of December, the blacks began to harass the horses, and another hard struggle took place.  Storms of rain now set in, and they had to travel through dismal tea-tree flats, with the constant expectation of being caught by a flood in the low-lying country.

In January, they had a gleam of hope.  On the 5th they came to a well-grassed valley, with a fine river running through it, which they named the Archer.  On the 9th they crossed another river, which they supposed to be the one named the Coen on the seaward side.  But once across this river, troubles gathered thick again; the rain poured down constantly, the country became so boggy that they could scarcely travel, and to crown all their misfortunes, two horses were drowned when crossing the Batavia, and six others were poisoned and died there.

Fate seemed now to have done her worst, and the explorers faced the future manfully.  Burying all that they could dispense with, they packed all their remaining horses and started resolutely to finish the journey on foot.  On the 14th two more of their horses died, and the blacks once more came up behind to reconnoitre.  As may be imagined, the whites were not in a patient humour, and this last skirmish was brief and severe.