104 
WYLIE ACTS AS GUIDE. 
and luxuriant. After ascending the range, we passed 
principally over stony hills, and valleys heavily 
timbered, and with brush or underwood, filling up 
the interstices of the trees. 
Ten miles from our last night’s camp we crossed 
the tracks of horses, apparently of no very old date, 
this being the first symptom we had yet observed of 
our approach towards the haunts of civilised man. 
The day was cold with heavy squalls of rain, and 
as the night appeared likely to be worse, I halted 
early, after a stage of thirteen miles. After dark 
the rain ceased, and the night cleared up, but was 
very cold. 
July 5. — Another rainy day, and so excessively 
cold that we were obliged to walk to keep ourselves 
at all warm ; we spent a miserable time, splashing 
through the wet underwood, and at fifteen miles we 
passed a fresh water lake, in a valley between some 
hills. This Wylie recognised as a place he had once 
been at before, and told me that he now knew the road 
well, and would act as guide, upon which I resigned 
the post of honour to him, on his promising always 
to take us to grass and water at night. Two miles 
and a half beyond the lake, we came to a fresh 
water swamp, and a mile beyond that to another, 
at which we halted for the night, with plenty of 
water, but very little grass. During the day, we 
had been travelling generally through a very heavily 
timbered country. 
At night the rain set in again, and continued to fall 
