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The travellers were out a long time before falling in with natives, although they saw signs of their vicinity, and ascertained that they were objects of curious observation and some anxiety to the timid Australians. They stumbled upon various native camps, recently vacated, and occasionally took the liberty of helping themselves to kangaroo nets and cordage, leaving in exchange fish hooks, handkerchiefs, and other European articles. On the 6th of December, upon rousing from his bivouac, Dr Leichhardt found "the horses had gone back to Ruined Castle Creek, about twenty-one miles distant (!), and the bullocks to the last camp, which, according to Charley, had been visited by the Blackfellow's, who had apparently examined it very minutely. It was evident they kept an eye upon us, although they never made their appearance." The Doctor's coolness in recording his disasters is quite provoking. If he exhibited the same laudable calm and resignation when he arose from his bed of reeds on the banks of the finch-haunted water-hole, and found his cattle had gone back a day's journey or more, as he does in writing down the fact, he is certainly the most Job-like of travellers. We could sometimes quarrel with him for making so very light of heavy inconveniences and positive misfortunes. It is necessary to pause and reflect in order to appreciate what he endured. The hasty reader, skimming the page without allowing his imagination to dwell on the Doctor's brief indications of the many sufferings, the wounds and sickness (the latter often caused by unwholesome diet), the hunger and thirst, the daily and nightly exposure, for fifteen months, to scorching suns and drenching rains, undergone by himself and his companions, might complete the perusal with the impression on his mind that the whole affair was rather pleasant than otherwise—a sort of prolonged pic-nic, varied by kangaroo hunts, fishing parties, and shooting excursions. Bread stuffs, he would have to admit, were scarce in that cornless land: but hard exercise and fresh air sharpen the appetite and strengthen the digestion; and a keen woodsman will not heed bannocks when he can get beef, varied by such an exotic viand as kangaroo venison, and by such delicate and fantastical volatiles as harlequin pigeons and rose-breasted cockatoos. Nay, so easy is it to fight battles in one's back parlour, and to endure hardships with one's feet on the fender, that this same imaginary and hastily-judging reader, whose flippant conclusions we now quote, may think lightly of the necessity in which our travellers found themselves of eating a horse, as recorded in the Leichhardtian journal, p. 247. A horse broke its thigh, and it was resolved to make the best of the meat. It proved tolerably palatable, especially the liver and kidneys, pronounced equal to those of a bullock. When the flour was gone, the only relief from the monotony of a carnivorous diet was obtained by experimentalising on seeds, fruits, and roots, of which many unknown species were met with. How the party escaped death by poison is a wonder, for they were very venturesome in their essays, and not unfrequently were punished for their boldness by severe vomitings and other unpleasant symptoms. The jerked meat they carried with them often became musty and tainted, having been imperfectly dried, or from the effects of rain. But their greatest difficulty was the frequent scarcity of water, which sadly afflicted their horses, and prolonged their route, compelling them to deviate from the direct course to encamp near pools or lagoons. These were not always to be found; and they often remained for very many hours, even for days, without other water than they could carry in their scanty kettles. Then the bullocks were allowed to stray in search of drink, and it was sometimes necessary, in order to save the horses' lives, to take them back to the previous night's camping place. The fatigues thus encountered might well have exhausted the endurance and physical energies of the strongest man. "I had been in a state of the most anxious suspense," says Dr Leichhardt on one of these occasions, "about the fate of our bullocks, and was deeply thankful to the Almighty when I heard they were all safe. I had suffered much from thirst, having been forty-eight hours without water, and which had