348 
Captain Sturt’s Expedition into the 
to his setting. I had had little to eat, bad water to drink, and 
great anxiety of mind; and if I had not possessed a good consti¬ 
tution, I should have suffered long before I did. Be that as it 
may, I now began to feel the effects of long exposure and want; 
but when I came to reflect on what I had done, I had well-nigh 
resolved on braving the season, and staying where I was until rain 
should fall to enable me to cross the desert, which I never would 
have re-crossed. I asked Mr. Stuart (whose faithful services 1 
would gladly reward if I could), and the two men who accom¬ 
panied me, Morgan and Mark, if they would run such risk with 
me, and received from all three an assurance that they would stick 
to me to the last. But when I considered the precarious situation 
of Mr. Browne and his generous devotion ; when I considered 
that he would never leave the desert until every hope of my return 
should have died within him, and that then his retreat homewards 
would be cut off, and he would either perish with his men, or have 
to stay another summer at the old depbt, I determined to sacrifice 
every selfish feeling, and return to the stockade. We therefore 
prepared for leaving the creek, and I went with Mr. Stuart to the 
rhagodia bush, to see if our stores were safe. I should have stated 
that we had found a body of natives that were not disposed to be 
friendly, and I feared that they had “sprung our plant”—to use 
a colonial expression. As we approached the bush we saw a bag 
outside, and made sure that all our things were gone; but nothing 
else had been touched; and we discovered at last that a native 
dog had smelt the oil in the small lamp, and had dragged the baa- 
from under cover. I left every thing I could behind me, to lighten 
the horses’ loads for the forty miles journey they had before them 
and on the morning of the 11th of November we left Cooper’s 
Creek on our return to the stockade. We got slowly on but 
reached the first creek an hour after sunset. There was a smaller 
pond of water about seven miles from the large sheet of water I 
have described, but in this I had no hopes any water would now 
remain; happily, however, we found sufficient for our use; and at 
this pond we stopped all night. Starting at dawn on the following 
morning for the farther water, with the intention after giving our 
horses a good drink (the last they would have for 86 miles), of 
