All hands turned out, and having mounts in the paddock, Cook and Brabazon were soon in the saddle galloping towards the fording place.  Striking the stream some distance below where the accident occurred, both sides were carefully searched, as they worked up.  When within a quarter of a mile of the ford Cook discovered the body of the Doctor lying stranded with head and shoulders under water.  Life, of course, was extinct.  He was drawn gently from the stream and laid on the shingle just as the foot men arrived with torches.  It was a sad spectacle, this fine old man we all loved and respected so much, only a few hours before full of life and health, now a ghastly corpse, his hair and long white beard lying dank over his cold white face and glaring eyes.  The scene was rendered all the more weird and awful by the surroundings, the still dark night, the rushing water, and overhanging cliffs under the red glare of the torches.  His body was laid across one of the saddles while one walked on each side to keep it from falling, and so they returned to the station that lonely four miles in the dead of night.

He was laid in the woolshed and a watch placed on guard, and early in the morning a messenger was despatched to Dr. Haast with the sad tidings.  His party were at first alarmed at his non-appearance the previous evening, but at length took it for granted that he must have returned to the station, and felt confident that with his attendant and a horse he could not possibly have come to any harm, the river being easily fordable on horseback, or even on foot by a strong man, but of course such a clumsy mistake as employing too short a rope never struck anybody.  The attendant who was responsible was one of the hands employed on ditching and fencing, and possibly was not much experienced at river fording, and he said the Doctor delayed so long botanising that darkness was upon them by the time they reached the fording place.

Dr. Sinclair’s remains were interred the following day about a mile from the homestead on the flat near the south bank of the Rangitata, where his tomb doubtless may now be seen, his last earthly resting place; and, dear old man, with all his strong antipathy to horses, what would he have thought could he have known that one was destined at last to be the cause of his death?

As a set-off against the previous sad story I may relate an amusing one, in which I was myself a principal actor, and which occurred soon after my arrival at Mesopotamia.  Butler was much exercised about some experimental grass-growing he was carrying on about three miles from the station, on the further side of one of the boundary streams I first referred to, where he had recently secured another slice of country.

Early one morning I had started alone on foot for the paddocks, where Butler and Cook were to meet me later, riding, and if I found the stream too high to ford on foot, I was to await their arrival.