CH. III.] SEARCH CONTINUED DOWN THE BOGAN. 191 



fallen in with our track and rejoined us ; and that, while 

 we halted for him, he had gone a-head of us, and out of 

 reach. 



April 30. — I put the party in movement, along the left 

 bank of the Bogan, its general course being north-west, and 

 about five miles from our camp we crossed the same solitary 

 line of shoe-marks, seen the day before, and still going due 

 north ! With sanguine hopes we traced it to a pond in the 

 bed of the river, and the two steps by which Mr. Cunningham 

 first reached water, and in which he must have stood while 

 allaying his burning thirst, were very plain in the mud ! 

 The scales of some large fish lay upon them, and I could 

 not but hope, that even the most savage natives would have 

 fed a white man, circumstanced as Mr. Cunninoham must 

 then have been. Overseer Burnett, Whiting and the Doctor, 

 proceeded in search of him down the river, while the party 

 continued, as well as the dense scrubs of casuarinae per- 

 mitted, in a direction parallel to its course. Just as we 

 found Mr. Cunningham's footsteps, a column of smoke arose 

 from the woods to the southward, and I went in search of 

 the natives, Bulger accompanying me with his musket. 

 After we had advanced in the direction of the smoke two 

 miles, it entirely disappeared, and we could neither hear, nor 

 see, any other traces of human beings in these dismal soli- 

 tudes. The density of the scrubs had obliged me to make 

 some detours to the left, so that I did not reach the Bogan, 

 till long after it was quite dark. Those who had gone in 

 search of Mr. Cunningham, did not arrive at our camp that 

 night, although we sent up several sky-rockets, and fired 

 some shots. 



3Ja^ 1. — The party came in from tracing Mr. Cunning- 

 ham'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 some one, either 

 accompanying or tracking Mr. Cunningham. Atone place, 

 were the remains of a small fire, and the shells of a few 



