May 1.
The party came in from tracing Mr. Cunningham's steps along the dry bed of the Bogan, and we were glad to find that the impressions continued. There appeared to be the print of a small naked foot of someone either accompanying or tracking Mr. Cunningham. At one place were the remains of a small fire, and the shells of a few mussels, as if he had eaten them. It was now most desirable to get ahead of this track, and I lost no time in proceeding, to the extent of another day's journey, parallel to the Bogan or, rather, so as to cut off a great bend of it.
DEATH OF THE KANGAROO.
We crossed some good undulating ground, open and grassy, the scenery being finer, from the picturesque grouping and character of the trees, than any we had hitherto seen. On one of these open tracts I wounded a female kangaroo at a far shot of my rifle, and the wretched animal was finally killed after a desperate fight with the dogs.
REFLECTIONS.
There is something so affecting in the silent and deadly struggle between the harmless kangaroo and its pursuers that I have sometimes found it difficult to reconcile the sympathy such a death excites with our possession of canine teeth, or our necessities, however urgent they might be.
The huntsman's pleasure is no more, indeed, when such an animal dies thus before him, persecuted alike by the civilised and the savage. In this instance a young one, warm from the pouch of its mother, frisked about at a distance, as if unwilling to leave her, although it finally escaped. The nights were cold, and I confess that thoughts of the young kangaroo did obtrude at dinner, and were mingled with my kangaroo-steak.
As we turned to our right in the afternoon in search of the Bogan, we encountered some casuarina scrub, to avoid which we had to wind a little, so that we only made the river at dusk, and at a part of the bed which was dry. Water, as we afterwards found, was near enough upwards, but the two parties sent in the evening having by mistake both sought for it in the other direction, we had none till early in the morning.
FIVE NATIVES BROUGHT TO ME WITH A SILK HANDKERCHIEF IN THEIR POSSESSION.
May 2.