376 THE HORSES INDISPENSABLE. 
carried the few things, which were indispensable to 
us, and which we never could have carried ourselves 
under the circumstances. 
There was another inducement to continue with 
the horses, which had considerable weight with me, 
and however revolting the idea might be at first, it 
was a resource which I foresaw the desperate cir- 
cumstances we were in must soon compel us to 
adopt. It was certainly horrible to contemplate the 
destruction of the noble animals that had accom- 
panied us so far, but ere long I well knew that such 
would be the only chance of saving our own lives, 
and I hoped that by accustoming the mind to dwell 
upon the subject beforehand, when the evil hour 
did arrive, the horror and disgust would be in some 
degree lessened. Upon consulting the overseer, I 
was glad to find that he agreed with me fully in 
the expediency of not abandoning the horses until 
it became unavoidable, and that he had himself 
already contemplated the probability of our being 
very shortly reduced to the alternative of using them 
for food. 
It remained now only to decide, which way we 
would go when we agan moved on, whether to pro- 
secute our journey to the Sound, or try to retrace our 
steps to Fowler’s Bay. On this point my own opi- 
nion never wavered for an instant. My conviction 
of the utter impossibility of our ever being able to 
recross the fearful country we had passed through 
with such difficulty, under circumstances so much 
