As may be imagined, the whites were not in a patient humour, and this last skirmish was brief and severe.
On the 17th two more horses died from the effects of the poison plant.
Fifteen only were left out of the forty-two with which they had started.
They were now approaching the narrow point of the Cape, and found themselves on a dreary waste of barren country whereon only heath grew, and which was intersected with boggy creeks.
On the 10th of January, they caught a glimpse of the sea from the top of a tree, and on the 20th they were in full view of it.

As they went on, they were entangled in the same kind of scrub that baffled Kennedy, and at last on the 29th, after some days of scrub-cutting, it was determined to halt the cattle, whilst the brothers should push on to Somerset in the endeavour to find a more practicable track.

In the tangled, scrubby country through which they had passed, it had been difficult to form a true conception of the distance, and their estimate of twenty miles for the distance separating them from the settlement was much too short.
On the 30th of January, the two Jardines and their most trusted black boy, Eulah, started to find the settlement.

For a time they were hemmed in by a bend of what they took to be the Escape River, but on getting clear of it, they were surprised to come to another large and swollen river, which apparently ran into the Gulf.

This forced them to return.
After a few days' rest, they made a second vain attempt.