LATE ALLAN CUNNINGHAM, ESQ. 287 



of every care of my people, the heaviest laden packhorse in 

 attempting to jump down a perpendicular fall over a rock of 

 three feet in depth, lost his balance, and was in an instant 

 off his legs, on the edge of a sharp brushy declivity, down 

 which he rolled over five times before one of the saddle bajTs 

 stopped his frightful, hurried descent. Every assistancJe was 

 promptly afforded him, and, on being disburdened of his 

 load, he got upon his legs evidently much shaken in the loins, 

 but no bones fractured. The dangers of a loosely stoned 

 track along a sharp decline of the mountains, very frequently 

 obstructed by large trunks of fallen timber, appeared to be 

 so considerable, as scarcely to warrant our further prosecution 

 of the journey to Cox's River, with packhorses so heavily laden 

 as mine were. Unwilling, however, to halt and suffer myself 

 to be discouraged by a single accident, we continued along 

 the slope of the mountain another half-mile, when both my 

 wearied beasts having repeatedly fallen under their loads, 

 and the path (if it might be so called,) becoming much more 

 rough and dangerous by shelving rocks and fallen timber, I 

 was obliged to halt in a rugged stony scrub on the sharp side 

 of the mountain, it being dusk, and heavy rain had already 

 set in for the night. Thus situated, we pitched our tent on 

 the declivity, gave our poor beasts a little corn which we had 

 cautiously brought with us, and frugally issued, and then 

 secured them to trees around our fire for the night, without 

 a blade of grass or herb to eat, the recent fires of the survev- 

 ing party having passed through the brush, and destroyed 

 every kind of vegetation. 



" 30^^. The wind continuing from the southward and 

 eastward, we had rain throughout the day. Some young 

 rushes being found by one of my people on a patch of bog 

 about half a mile westerly round the mountain, I caused the 

 horses to be shifted to, and tethered upon it; it however bene- 

 fited them nothing, since they partook but little of it. 



*' Dec. 1. The route onward westerly proving on exami- 

 nation much more rugged and dangerous than the paths we 

 have passed, and as both my horses are now reduced to that 



