enough, at all events he did not find him. Probably, the poor sufferer had crawled a little out of the track, for, afterwards, when a party was sent from Swan River in search of him, they traced, with the help of a native, his footsteps up a bare sand hill to the height of twelve or fourteen feet, and there, turning about to the left, they found the object of their search stretched lifeless upon his back, in the midst of a thick bush, where he seemed to have laid down to sleep, being half wrapped up in his blanket.[11] All his little articles of baggage were very near him, and, from the posture in which he was found, it appeared that the immediate cause of his death was a rush of blood to the head, which would occasion no great suffering in his last moments. A grave was scraped in the sand by the searching party, and Frederic Smith was buried in the wilderness wherein he had died, and which he had been among the first to explore, about seventy-six miles northward of the Swan River. The grave was made smooth, and a piece of wood found upon the neighbouring beach was placed at its head, and then the solitary spot was forsaken for ever by the mourning companions of the departed youth, who left "Heaven's fresh gales, and the ocean's wave, Alternate to sigh o'er the wanderer's grave."[12] [9] "The most singular quality of this vapour or _mirage_, as it is termed, is its power of reflection; objects are seen as from the surface of a lake, and their figure is sometimes changed into the most fantastic shapes."--CRICHTON'S _Arabia_, vol. i. p. 41. [10] See two other curious accounts of the effects of _mirage_ and refraction in Sturt's Expeditions in Australia, vol. ii. pp. 56 and 171. [11] The artless description of this sad discovery, given by one of the natives who accompanied the party, may be not unworthy of the reader's notice. "Away we go, away, away, along the shore away, away, away, a long distance we go. I see Mr. Smith's footsteps ascending a sand-hill, onwards I go regarding his footsteps. I see Mr. Smith dead. We commence digging the earth. Two _sleeps_ had he been dead; greatly did I weep, and much I grieved. In his blanket folding him, we scraped away the earth. We scrape earth into the grave, we scrape the earth into the grave, a little wood we place in it. Much earth we heap upon it--much earth we throw up. No dogs can dig there, so much earth we throw up. The sun had just inclined to the westward as we laid him in the ground."--GREY'S _Travels in Western Australia_, vol. ii. p. 350.