On Our Retreat We Travelled Round The Northern Face Of The Hills, Upon Whose South Side We Had Arrived, In Hopes Of Finding Some Place Having Water, Where I Might Form A Depot For A Few Days.

By night we could find none, and had to encamp without, either for ourselves or our horses.

The following day seemed foredoomed to be unlucky; it really appeared as though everything must go wrong by a natural law. In the first place, while making a hobble peg, while Carmichael and Robinson were away after the horses, the little piece of wood slipped out of my hand, and the sharp blade of the knife went through the top and nail of my third finger and stuck in the end of my thumb. The cut bled profusely, and it took me till the horses came to sew my mutilated digits up. It was late when we left this waterless spot. As there was a hill with a prepossessing gorge, I left Carmichael and Robinson to bring the horses on, and rode off to see if I could find water there. Though I rode and walked in gullies and gorges, no water was to be found. I then made down to where the horses should have passed along, and found some of them standing with their packs on, in a small bit of open ground, surrounded by dense scrubs, which by chance I came to, and nobody near. I called and waited, and at last Mr. Carmichael came and told me that when he and Robinson debouched with the horses on this little open space, they found that two of the animals were missing, and that Robinson had gone to pick up their tracks.

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