Bad luck still haunted them; tortured by flies, mosquitoes, and sand-flies, their horses scattered and rambled incessantly.

While the brothers were absent, searching one day for the horses, the party at the camp allowed the solitary mule to stray away with its pack on.

The mule was never found again, and it carried with it, in its pack, some of their most necessary articles, reducing them nearly to the same state of deprivation as their determined enemies, the aboriginals.

Two more horses went mad, through drinking salt water; one died, and the other was so ill that he had to be abandoned.

On the 13th of December they reached the Mitchell River, not without having had another hot battle with the blacks, who followed them day after day, watching for every opportunity and displaying the same relentless hostility that they had formerly shown to Kennedy.