[ See Appendix.]
As is unfortunately so usual in these cases, Cunningham had, by wandering
in eccentric and contradictory courses, accelerated his fate, by
rendering the work of the tracking party so much more tedious and
difficult. Had he, on finding how absolutely he was astray, remained at
the first water he reached, he would have been found.
Having done all that man could do to find his lost friend, and even
jeopardised the final success of his own expedition by the long delay of
fourteen days, Mitchell resumed his journey by easy stages down the
Bogan, and on the 25th of May reached the Darling, which was at once
recognised by all the former members of the party as the "Karaula," from
the peculiar attributes that characterised it. On tasting the water, they
were agreeably surprised to find it fresh and sweet. The state of the
country now was very different from what it was when Sturt was forced to
retreat. With that explorer's graphic account of the barren solitude that
he met with, fresh in the reader's memory, let him contrast it with what
Mitchell writes, remembering that one was encamped beside a salt stream,
and the latter writer beside a fresh water river.
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