Just then a good old packhorse, named Rattler, knocked up, and I reluctantly gave orders to leave him behind, when Whiting, the old guardsman, volunteered to remain with him, and bring him on after he had rested:  this in the face of both hunger and danger I duly appreciated, and long remembered, to his advantage.  We soon after came upon some surface water and refreshed the tired animals.  Precisely at eight o’clock, as I had arranged with Mr. White, a rocket ascended from the camp, and to us was just perceptible, like a needle in the remote distance.  That little column of fire however was enough to assure the fatigued men; and it enabled me to mark two stars in the same direction, which guided me on towards the camp.  At length we could distinguish the large fires made there for the same purpose; and by ten o’clock we had terminated the arduous labours of the day, and I had the satisfaction to find that the party under Mr. White had remained undisturbed.  Two more rockets were afterwards sent up for the guidance of Whiting, and a huge fire was also kept burning until, at three A.M. the old soldier arrived safe, bringing up the old horse which, after resting a while and drinking at the water (found by Whiting as well as by us) had come on tolerably well.

HOMEWARD JOURNEY CONTINUED.

February 19.

Notwithstanding the fatigues undergone by a portion of the party we were all glad to quit the muddy camp this morning; and we continued to travel towards the old route, on the same bearing by which we had approached it.

DIFFICULT TRAVELLING.

The ground was still soft, rendering the draught heavy, and our homeward progress was accordingly very slow.  At length however we reached the ponds, which we recognised as the same we had formerly crossed about a mile and a half more to the eastward, and I now named them Welcome Ponds.  To these salutary waters Mr. Finch had fallen back when unable to find any at Mount Frazer.  We this day traversed an open plain extending the whole way between the two camps.  I observed, as we proceeded, a hill to the southward, the summit of which was equally clear of timber as the plains, above which its height was 80 or 100 feet.  The sides were grassy and smooth.  I named it Mount Mud, in commemoration of the difficulties with which we had contended in its neighbourhood.  Welcome Ponds, on which we now encamped, had been converted by the late rain into a running brook.  The slopes of the ground on its banks were so anomalous that but for the actual current of the water to the westward, and the situation of the hills on the eastward, whence alone it could come, I must have remained in doubt as to the direction of the fall of the waters in that channel.  The banks of these watercourses on the plains, as I have elsewhere observed, are the highest parts of the ground.  This higher ground appeared here to rise towards the west, along the banks of the brook which, flowing also westward, seemed to run up hill.