our guide seemed unwilling to put further questions, saying she had promised to send at sunset to our tents two young boys, who could inform us better.  Even in such a wretched state of existence, ornaments had their charms with this female, though the decency of covering was wholly disregarded.  Around her brow she had kangaroo teeth fastened to the few remaining hairs, and a knot of brown feathers decorated her right temple.  The roasting snake, which we had seen in the morning, belonged, as we now learned, to this witch of the glen.

PROPOSED EXCURSION WITH PACKHORSES.

The boys did not visit us in the evening as Mr. Brown had expected; and he appeared unusually thoughtful, when I found him sitting alone by the waterside, at some distance from the camp.  I was then making arrangements for carrying across the range the bulk of our provisions and equipment on packhorses and bullocks, intending to leave the remainder of our stores at this spot, in charge of two men armed; but of this measure Mr. Brown did not approve.

NATIVE GUIDE ABSCONDS.

December 20.

When the packhorses had been loaded and we were about to start, leaving the remainder of our provisions in charge of two men, we discovered that our native guide was missing.  I had promised him for his services a tomahawk, a knife, and a blanket, and as I supposed he was already far beyond his own beat, he might have had the promised rewards, by merely asking for them.  We had always given him plenty of flour, also his choice of any part of the kangaroos we killed.  It had been observed by the men that the intelligence received from the old woman had made him extremely uneasy, and he had also expressed to them on the previous evening his apprehensions about the natives in the country before us.  I was very sorry for the loss of Mr. Brown.  He was very comical, as indeed these half-civilised aborigines generally are; he liked to be close-shaved, wore a white neckcloth, and declared it to be his intention of becoming, from that time forward a whitefellow.  I concluded that he had returned to his own tribe; and that he had been unwilling to acknowledge to me his dread of the myall tribes.  We proceeded up the valley, or to the eastward, with the pack animals, and endeavoured to pass to the northward, where we found a valley in that direction, but at length it became impossible to go forward with some of the bullocks, which were not used to carry packsaddles.

THE RANGE IMPASSABLE.

The passage was almost hopeless, indeed it was so bad that I was at length convinced it might be easier to pass to the northward in ANY other direction than this, and that it would not be prudent to struggle with such difficulties, and separate my party for the purpose of crossing a range, which, for all I could see, might be easily turned by passing between its western extremity and the river Namoi.

RETURN TO TANGULDA.