Nov. 9, 1857.] 
NORTH AUSTRALIAN EXPEDITION. 
5 
Tlie slieep were transferred to the Tom Tough, and the 
Monarch being no longer required, sailed for Singapore. Mr. 
Gregory, with the party from the Monarch, proceeded over land 
with the horses, while we in the Tom Tough were to meet him 
at Kangaroo Point, up the Victoria. 
Unfortunately, in running up with a light wind and strong tide, 
the schooner grounded, and drifting with successive tides from one 
shoal to another, remained on shore for twenty-seven days, losing 
an anchor and cable, straining herself so that sometimes it was 
feared she would go to pieces, and spoiling a great quantity of bread 
from the water, which at one time was four feet deep in her hold. 
The sheep, a hundred and forty in number, suffered greatly for 
want of water, and died daily. We made a trip to Palm Island, 
thirty or forty miles higher up the river, and brought down six 
hundred gallons in the inflatable canoe, and commenced boating the 
sheep up to a place in Long Peach, where we had found a well, and 
where Mr. J. R. Elsey with three men formed a camp. 
Here, in October, Mr. Gregory arrived with thirty-six horses, 
four having been left behind from weakness' or died from poison, 
and three more had been dangerously bitten by alligators near 
a small creek of the Fitz-Maurice River. He went down with 
me in the boat to the schooner, and, landing a little lower down the 
river, found water oozing from under a stone below high water 
mark. We scooped out a well, and in the night filled two large 
casks, much to the astonishment of the crew, who could not 
understand our digging for fresh water underneath the salt. Our 
sheep were landed at a small pool, and when the schooner reached 
the place where the camp had been established, were brought up 
by the boats ; the poor remnant of our flock comprising only a few 
miserable skeletons out of two hundred. I repaired the inflatable 
canoe, making two boats of it instead of a double one, as originally 
intended; and, on the 15th of November, Mr. Gregory, with 
Mr. Wilson, myself, and Flood, started for a day’s trip up the 
river, which we found, like most of the Australian rivers, a chain 
of pools, perhaps a mile or two in length, with long portages 
between them. In the afternoon of the 17th we turned back, reach- 
ing camp the next day. 
On the 23rd, Mr. Gregory, with his brother Henry, Mr. Wilson, 
and Dr. Mueller, left camp with seven horses, to make a preparatory 
exploration of the country. Captain Gourlay was busy with his 
own and our men in cutting timber, with which he laid a substan- 
tial inner frame in the Tom Tough, and I was left to see to the 
safety of the camp and horses. Two of these strayed to a eonsi- 
