It was owing to a very natural mistake that Eyre was led astray. He intended to try a straighter and shorter route than the one round the Murray, and for a time got on very well, but coming across a tract of dry country across which he could not take the cattle, he determined to follow Mitchell's Wimmera River to the north, naturally thinking that it would lead him easily to the Murray, and would probably prove to be identical with the Lindsay, as marked on Sturt's chart. From Mitchell's furthest point, he traced it a considerable distance to the north-west, and at last found its termination in a large swampy lake, which he called after the first Governor of South Australia, Lake Hindmarsh. From this lake he could find no outlet, so taking with him two men, he made an attempt to push through to the Murray, leaving his cattle to await him. He found the country covered with an almost impenetrable mallee scrub, and as there was neither grass nor water for the horses, he was forced to retreat. He reached his camp after a weary struggle on foot, the horses having died from thirst. Eyre was then compelled to return and gain the bank of the Murray by the nearest available route. The bitter disappointment of the trip was, that when forced to retreat by the inhospitable nature of the country, he was but twenty-five miles from the river. Bonney, however, on another occasion, took a mob of cattle from the Goulburn River to Adelaide in almost a direct line. In February 1839, he left the Goulburn and steered a course for the Grampian Mountains, where he struck the Wannon, and followed it down to the Glenelg. Here he came upon one of the Henty stations, and was strongly advised not to persist in his attempt. Captain Hart, who had been examining the country with the same purpose in view as Bonney's, stated that it would be impossible to take cattle through and turned back with his own to follow the old route round the Murray bend. But Bonney was not to be daunted, and resolutely pushed on west of the Glenelg. He discovered and named Lake Hawdon, and also named two mountains, Mount Muirhead and Mount Benson. But at Lacepede Bay his most serious troubles commenced. The party had pushed on steadily to within forty miles of Lake Alexandrina when, in the middle of a sandy desert, the working bullocks failed. Bonney divided his party, and sending some of the men back to take the workers to a brackish pool which they had passed, he himself with the stockmen and two black boys, made a desperate effort to reach the Lake with the main mob. For two days they pushed steadily on, travelling day and night, until men and beasts were alike at their last gasp. Bonney then tried a desperate expedient: "I then determined," he says, "as a last resource, to kill a calf and use the blood to assuage our thirst. This was done, and though the blood did not allay the pangs of thirst to any great extent, it restored our strength very much."