While we delayed here, Mr. Tietkens’s fine young riding bull got poisoned, and though we did everything we possibly could for him, he first went cranky, and subsequently died.  I was very much grieved; he was such a splendid hack, and so quiet and kind; I greatly deplored his loss.  The only substance I could find that he had eaten was Gyrostemon, there being plenty of it here.  Upon leaving Mr. Palmer’s camp we next visited a station called the Bowes—­being on the Bowes Creek, and belonging to Mr. Thomas Burgess, whose father entertained us so well at Tipperary, near York.  Mr. Burgess and his wife most cordially welcomed us.  This was a most delightful place, and so homelike; it was with regret that I left it behind, Mrs. Burgess being the last white lady I might ever see.

Mr. Burgess had another station called Yuin, about 115 miles easterly from here, and where his nephews, the two Messrs. Wittenoom, resided.  They also have a station lying north-east by north called Cheangwa.  On the fifth day from the Bowes we reached Yuin.  The country was in a very dry state.  All the stock had been removed to Cheangwa, where rains had fallen, and grass existed in abundance.  At Yuin Mr. Burgess had just completed the erection of, I should say, the largest wool-shed in the Colony.  The waters on the station consist of shallow wells and springs all over it.  It is situated up the Greenough River.  Before reaching Cheangwa I met the elder of the two Wittenooms, whom I had previously known in Melbourne; his younger brother was expected back from a trip to the north and east, where he had gone to look for new pastoral runs.  When he returned, he told us he had not only been very successful in that way, but had succeeded in capturing a native desperado, against whom a warrant was out, and who had robbed some shepherds’ huts, and speared, if not killed, a shepherd in their employ.  Mr. Frank Wittenoom was leading this individual alongside of his horse, intending to take him to Geraldton to be dealt with by the police magistrate there.  But O, tempora mutantur!  One fine night, when apparently chained fast to a verandah post, the fellow managed to slip out of his shackles, quietly walked away, and left his fetters behind him, to the unbounded mortification of his captor, who looked unutterable things, and though he did not say much, he probably thought the more.  This escape occurred at Yuin, to which place I had returned with Mr. E. Wittenoom, to await the arrival of Mr. Burgess.  When we were all conversing in the house, and discussing some excellent sauterne, the opportunity for his successful attempt was seized by the prisoner.  He effected his escape through the good offices of a confederate friend, a civilised young black fellow, who pretended he wanted his hair cut, and got a pair of sheep shears from Mr. Wittenoom during the day for that apparent purpose, saying that the captive would cut it for him.  Of course the shears were not returned, and at night the captive or his friend used them to prise open a split link of the chain which secured him, and away he went as free as a bird in the air.