The first start of the expedition could hardly be called a good one; at least, it was not such as to encourage the faint-hearted, or falsify anticipations of extreme hardships and difficulties. A light spring-cart, which the doctor had fondly hoped to take with him through the wilderness, was broken the very first day. He was fortunate enough to exchange it for three bullocks, and proceeded to break in five of those animals for the pack-saddle, finding he could not depend upon his horses for carrying baggage. But the bullocks gave a deal of trouble, and were most unsatisfactory beasts of burthen. The weight they could carry without injury and exhaustion, was very small in comparison with their known strength,--not more than a hundred and fifty pounds, Dr Leichhardt found, for a constancy--without the advantage of roads. Mules would have been the proper carriers; and troublesome, kicking, contrary demons as they often are, under a hot sun and with the aggravation of flies, they could hardly have been more refractory than their bovine substitutes. Persons whose whole experience of bullocks, as beasts of draught and burthen, consists in having seen a pair of them tugging, with painful docility and resignation, at a heavy continental cart--a ponderous yoke across their necks, or their heads attached with multitudinous thongs to the extremity of a massive pole--can form but a faint idea of the tribulations of the Doctor and his friends, who had to lead the beasts, as best they might, with iron nose-rings, and who, moreover, being wholly unused to cattle of that description, had at first a not unnatural dislike of the horns. Then the pack-saddles did not fit, and the immediate result was sore backs; the cargo would get loose and fall off, to the fracture and destruction of straps; or the hornets, whose nests, suspended from the branches, were disturbed by the passage of the caravan, would drive the unlucky oxen nearly mad, by a stinging assault upon their hind quarters. Finally, both horses and bullocks had a singular propensity to stray back during the night to the previous halting place, whence they had to be fetched in the morning, causing great delay, and often postponing the start till mid-day. Here is a significant little entry in the log, comprising the entire proceedings of one day, which gives an idea of the difficulty of progress. "Oct. 2--Bullocks astray, but found at last by Charley, and a start attempted at one o'clock: the greater part of the bullocks with sore backs. The native tobacco in blossom. One of the bullocks broke his pack-saddle, and compelled us to halt." Only one small plug of tobacco to all that peck of troubles! The nicotian flower the sole object in the scene of disaster, on which the eye can rest with a sensation of relief. Stray cattle, sore backs, broken saddles! The combination of calamities can only be appreciated by those who have encountered it, in the desert, and when anxious to prosecute their march.