January 18.
We started at dawn, following down the river, but could see nothing of Mr. Elliott's tracks: and our evening journey was equally unsuccessful. I now became very anxious and indeed rather alarmed for the safety of the missing party, but resolved, as the best plan I could pursue, to strike across the mountains to Leschenault, making a due west course my true line of route, but constantly diverging two or three miles to the south of this, and again returning to it by another route. I should thus have every chance of falling in with the track I wished to find; and in the event of my not succeeding I should be certain, if on my arrival at Leschenault no tidings had been received of Mr. Elliott, that his party must be somewhere to the southward and eastward of the course I had taken, and that I might still, by the assistance of the Leschenault natives to whom this country was known, succeed in finding him before such a period had elapsed as would render assistance useless.
KILLING A KANGAROO.
On the 19th, in pursuance of this determination, we made a rapid push of nearly twenty miles in a westerly direction without reckoning our divergencies to the southward. Nothing however but toil and disappointment rewarded our exertions. We killed a large Boomer, or old male kangaroo, the largest indeed I had ever seen; the dogs were unable to master him he fought so desperately, and it was not until after he had wounded two of them that I succeeded in dispatching it by a sort of personal encounter in which a club was the weapon I used. The native who was carrying my gun had dropped it the instant the kangaroo was started, and I was thus unable to shoot it. We cut off as much of the flesh as the dogs and ourselves required for two days and left the rest in the forest. We halted for the night on a small stream, the only one I had seen since we quitted the Williams.
COUNTRY UPON THE HARVEY RIVER.
Our departure was delayed on the morning of the 20th for about an hour from being unable to find one of the horses which had strayed away in the night, but, the fugitive being at length discovered and brought back, we started and made nine miles before breakfast. We then travelled nine and a half miles more, when we came upon the river Harvey near its source. The character of the country we had travelled over since entering the mountains was monotonous in the extreme. It consisted of an elevated tableland composed of ironstone and granite occasionally traversed by veins of whinstone. On this tableland there was little or no herbage; the lower vegetation consisting principally of a short prickly scrub, in some places completely destroyed by the native fires; but the whole country was thickly clothed with mahogany trees, so that in many parts it might be called a dense forest. These mahogany trees ascended, without a bend or without throwing off a branch, to the height of from forty to fifty feet, occasionally much more, and the ground was so encumbered by the fallen trunks of these forest trees that it was sometimes difficult to pick a passage between them. Even at midday the forest wore a sombre aspect, and a stillness and solitude reigned throughout it that was very striking. Occasionally a timid kangaroo might be seen stealing off in the distance, or a kangaroo-rat might dart out from a tuft beneath your feet; but these were rare circumstances. The most usual disturber of these wooded solitudes were the black cockatoos; but I have never in any part of the world seen so great a want of animal life as in these mountains.
Upon our gaining the Harvey however the scene somewhat changed; the river here bore the appearance of a mountain trout-stream, sometimes gurgling along with a rapid current, and sometimes forming large pools. The tableland could no longer be distinguished as it here changed to a broken chain of hills traversed by deep valleys; the scrub was higher and entwined by a variety of climbing plants, which rendered it very difficult to traverse; the mahogany trees became less frequent, and various others were mingled with them, whilst on the banks of the river good forage abounded. We made about five miles more through a country of this description and then halted for the night.
LOSE THE TRACKS. NATIVE GRAVE.
January 21.
We did not make more than seven miles before breakfast this morning, being embarrassed both by high and tangled underwood and rocky hills. We then halted on the banks of the Harvey, where there was some beautiful grass. We had still been able to find nothing of Mr. Elliott's tracks, and had in vain looked for natives: but this evening, soon after starting again, for the first time signs of them appeared, for we found a newly-made grave, carefully constructed, with a hut built over it to protect the now senseless slumberer beneath from the rains of winter. All that friendship could do to render his future state happy had been done. His throwing stick was stuck in the ground at his head; his broken spears rested against the entrance of the hut, the grave was thickly strewed with wilgey or red earth; and three trees in front of the hut, chopped with a variety of notches and uncouth figures and then daubed over with wilgey, bore testimony that his death had been bloodily avenged.