I lay down to sleep this night oppressed with very uneasy thoughts. I was thoroughly convinced that the position we occupied was a bad one to make a start from; but we had already approached too near the season of the heaviest rains (the beginning of February) to allow of longer delay, so that to have landed the horses, then to cut grass for them, and afterwards to have re-embarked them and the stores, would, in my opinion, have been a tedious and wrong course to adopt. Unforeseen difficulties, and against which we could not have guarded, had already completely encompassed us, so that, considering the scanty means at our disposal, the remote and unknown region in which we were situated, and the impossibility of our receiving further aid from any quarter, I saw no way of overcoming them. All therefore that was now left us was to make the most of our actual means, to acquit ourselves like men, and do our utmost. EXCURSION BY WATER TO PRINCE REGENT'S RIVER. January 18. Fortune smiled on us this morning in as far as she gave us a fine daybreak, and at dawn we started for Hanover Bay, leaving a small party at the encampment. After all the trouble I had taken to find a good route for the horses, we still had a great deal to do to render it at all practicable; we however all worked cheerfully and sturdily away at burning the grass, moving rocks and fallen trees, etc., and thus, as it were, fought our way through opposing obstacles to Hanover Bay, over a distance of about four miles. TROUBLE IN GETTING THE HORSES TO THE CAMP. On arriving there I found Mr. Lushington already on shore and some of the horses disembarked. They were not only well selected for the purpose, but were generally in good condition. They had however two faults which could not have been avoided, and these were that they were very small and perfectly wild. By about two o'clock in the afternoon the whole twenty-six had been swum ashore, and we started for the huts. Our progress was however slow; for, as there were only a few of us, each person was obliged to take charge of three or four of these untamed, unbroken brutes. The mode we adopted was to fasten them together by long ropes so that the number each man led could follow in a line; but, being wholly unused to this kind of discipline, they strenuously resisted it, biting and kicking at one another with the greatest ferocity; and as they were chiefly very courageous little entire horses, a variety of spirited contests took place, much to their own satisfaction, but to my infinite chagrin. Some of the men who were not much accustomed to horses regarded these wild ponies as being but little better than savage monsters, with whom it was dangerous to have anything to do; and, being thus rather afraid of them, treated them very cruelly, kicking them often with great violence whenever I for a moment looked away, and thus naturally rendering the ponies still more wild.