on their zealous services. The patience and resolution of such men in the
face of difficulties, I had already witnessed; and I had hired three of
the old hands, in order the more readily to introduce my accustomed camp
arrangements. Volunteers of all classes had certainly come eagerly
forward, offering their gratuitous services on this expedition of
discovery; but discipline and implicit obedience were necessary in such a
party to ensure the objects in view, as well as its own preservation; and
it was not judged expedient, where some prisoners were indispensable as
mechanics, to mix with them men of a different class, over whom the same
kind of authority could not be exercised.

Following the same road by which I quitted Buree, in 1835, my former line
of route across Hervey's Range lay to the left. The party thus arrived at
Bramadura, a sheep station occupied by Mr. Boyd. It was on the same chain
of ponds crossed by me on the journey of 1835, and then named Dochendoras
Creek, but now known as the Mundadgery chain of ponds. These ponds had
been filled by heavy rains which fell on Tuesday the 9th December--the
day on which I left Sydney, where the weather had been clear and sultry.
A tornado or hurricane had, on the same day, levelled part of the forest
near this place, laying prostrate the largest trees, one side of which
was completely barked by the hailstones. Many branches of trees along the
line of route, showed that the wind had been very violent to a
considerable distance.

16TH DECEMBER.--Some of the bullocks missing: the party could not,
therefore, quit the camp until 11 o'clock. The passage of the bed of the
chain of ponds (which we travelled up) was frequently necessary, and
difficult for heavily laden drays, which I found ours were, owing,
chiefly to a superabundance of flour, above the quantity I intended to
have taken, but supplied to my party, and brought forty miles by my drays