The road, if it might be called one, was really a track or belt of morass, some ten chains wide, in which one had to wade at times up to the knees. I was prepared to endure great hardships; but to understand the suffering to man and horse in dragging oneself along that road one must have tried it for himself. Twice that day the horse and I got bogged. To get clear again I had first to crawl on my hands and knees with part of my own load up to some fallen log and deposit it there, then back to the horse for more. When the horse was quite unloaded, I had to take it round the neck and let it use me as a sort of purchase by which to work itself out. Then load it again and wade along. I made eight miles that day, and I knew that no one who left Cooktown with me came so far. At the eighth mile there was a large camp of diggers, who said they could get no further nor yet back to Cooktown. I should have remained there; but as I saw next morning some prepare to get a little further, I started with them, and soon left them behind too. That day and the next the road was better although still very bad. I crossed a river the third evening I was out. It was as much as I could do to get over, and, as in the night it began to pour with rain, I concluded, what really proved to be the case, that the creek would rise and so effectually cut off my retreat. The next day the road was worse than ever. The horse got bogged time after time, and I was myself on the eve of being knocked up. The whole road so far, almost ever since I had left Cooktown, was strewn with clothes, boots, saddles, rations, in such quantities that there would have been enough to have opened a good store with if one could have got it all together. I had also passed at least a score of dead horses, sticking in the mud with the saddles, and, in some cases, rations on them; and I met scores of men, who, having thrown everything away, were struggling to reach Cooktown again on foot. But with dogged obstinacy I kept on trying to accomplish the impossible. At last the poor horse got bogged again worse than ever. I could not get him out. He looked so pitifully at me! I am sure it knew the predicament we were both in. I struggled and tried hard to get it out, but I could not. As it settled deeper and deeper into the quagmire I thought I might as well finish his sufferings and my own. So I put my gun to his ear and shot him.