On the 13th Lewis and an Afghan driver, on the only two camels that could travel, were sent forward to search for the station of Messrs. Harper and Co., and procure some help both in food and carriage. During his absence the Colonel and his companions lived, to use an expressive phrase, from hand to mouth. They could not get the fish to bite; but one day Richard Warburton shot a teal, and they rescued from the talons of a hawk a fine black duck, which supplied them with a splendid dinner. They were compelled, however, to fall back upon their last camel, though he was so lean and worn-out that he did not cut up well. On the 23rd they rejoiced in the capture of a couple of wood-ducks, and they also secured a little honey—a delightful novelty for persons who for many weeks had been deprived of the strengthening and useful properties of sugar. Still, these occasional “tidbits” could not supply the want of regular and nutritious food; and all the travellers could hope for was to stave off actual famine. Day after day passed by, and Lewis did not return. Colonel Warburton had calculated that he would be absent about fourteen days; but the seventeenth came, and yet there was no sign of Lewis. Writing in his journal, Colonel Warburton, on December 20th, sums up his position in a few pithy and pregnant sentences:—“We have abundance of water, a little tobacco, and a few bits of dried camel. Occasionally an iguana or a cockatoo enlivens our fare; and, lastly, I hope the late rain will bring up some thistles or some pig-weed that we can eat. Our difficulties are, to make our meat last, though, so far from doing us good, we are all afflicted with scurvy, diarrhoea, and affection of the kidneys from the use of it. We cannot catch the fish; we cannot find opossums or snakes; the birds won’t sit down by us, and we can’t get up to go to them. We thought we should have no difficulty in feeding ourselves on the river, but it turns out that, from one cause or another, we can get very little, and we are daily dropping down a peg or two lower.” But a few hours after making this entry, the Colonel’s long period of suffering and anxiety was at an end. He and his son were lying down near the little hut of boughs which they had constructed as a shelter, and listlessly eyeing the boy Charley, who had climbed a tree to look for honey, when they were startled by his cry—whether a yell of pain or shout of joy, it was impossible to determine. But in a moment the cause of his emotion was satisfactorily explained; out from the thick brushwood trotted a string of six horses, driven by the gallant Mr. Lewis, accompanied by another white man from a station on the De Grey river. They brought an ample supply of nutritious food, and on the following day some additional stores came up on camels. Mr. Lewis’s apparent delay was soon explained; the station, which belonged to Messrs. Grant, Harper, and Anderson, was one hundred and seventy miles distant.