and leave behind the things he had been carrying.  With the other two horses they got to within five miles of the place we first procured water at on the 30th March.  Here a second horse had become unable to proceed, and the things he had carried were also obliged to be left behind.  They then got both horses to the first well at the sand-hills and watered them, and after resting a couple of hours came on to join me.  Short as this distance was, the jaded horse could not travel it, and was left behind a mile and a half back.  Having shewn the overseer and boy the camp, I sent the other two natives to fetch up the tired horse, whilst I attended to the other, and put the solitary sheep in for the night.  By a little after dark all was arranged, and the horse that had been left behind once more with the others.

From the overseer I learnt, that during the fifty miles he had retraced our route to obtain the provisions we had left, he had five times dug for water:  four times he had found salt water, and once he had been stopped by rock.  The last effort of this kind he had made not far from where we found water on the 30th of March, and I could not but be struck with the singular and providential circumstance of our first halting and attempting to dig for water on that day in all our distress, at the very first place, and at the only place, within the 160 miles we had traversed, where water could have been procured.  It will be remembered, that in our advance, we had travelled a great part of the latter portion of this distance by night, and that thus there was a probability of our having passed unknowingly some place where water might have been procured.  The overseer had now travelled over the same ground in daylight, with renovated strength, and in a condition comparatively strong, and fresh for exertion.  He had dug wherever he thought there was a chance of procuring water, but without success in any one single instance.

After learning all the particulars of the late unlucky journey, I found that a great part of the things I had sent for were still thirty-eight miles back, having only been brought twelve miles from where they had originally been left; the rest of the things were ten miles away, and as nearly all our provisions, and many other indispensable articles were among them, it became absolutely necessary that they should be recovered in some way or other, but how that was to be accomplished was a question which we could not so easily determine.  Our horses were quite unfit for service of any kind, and the late unfortunate attempt had but added to the difficulties by which we were surrounded, and inflicted upon us the additional loss of another valuable animal.  Many and anxious were the hours I spent in contemplating the circumstances we were in, and in revolving in my mind the best means at our command to extricate ourselves from so perilous a situation.  We were still 650 miles from King George’s Sound, with an entirely unknown country