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 reached water, and in which he must have stood while allaying his burning thirst, were very plain in the mud!  The scales of some large fish lay upon them, and I could not but hope that even the most savage natives would have fed a white man circumstanced as Mr. Cunningham must then have been.  Overseer Burnett, Whiting and The Doctor proceeded in search of him down the river while the party continued, as well as the dense scrubs of casuarinae permitted, in a direction parallel to its course.  Just as we found Mr. Cunningham’s footsteps a column of smoke arose from the woods to the southward, and I went in search of the natives, Bulger accompanying me with his musket.  After we had advanced in the direction of the smoke two miles it entirely disappeared, and we could neither hear nor see any other traces of human beings in these dismal solitudes.  The density of the scrubs had obliged me to make some detours to the left, so that I did not reach the Bogan till long after it was quite dark.  Those who had gone in search of Mr. Cunningham did not arrive at our camp that night although we sent up several skyrockets and fired some shots.

May 1.

The party came in from tracing Mr. Cunningham’s steps along the dry bed of the Bogan, and we were glad to find that the impressions continued.  There appeared to be the print of a small naked foot of someone either accompanying or tracking Mr. Cunningham.  At one place were the remains of a small fire, and the shells of a few mussels, as if he had eaten them.  It was now most desirable to get ahead of this track, and I lost no time in proceeding, to the extent of another day’s journey, parallel to the Bogan or, rather, so as to cut off a great bend of it.

DEATH OF THE KANGAROO.

We crossed some good undulating ground, open and grassy, the scenery being finer, from the picturesque grouping and character of the trees, than any we had hitherto seen.  On one of these open tracts I wounded a female kangaroo at a far shot of my rifle, and the wretched animal was finally killed after a desperate fight with the dogs.

REFLECTIONS.