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162 the party, if well supplied with provisions, might have travelled at leisure, had now to be exchanged for a rocky and mountainous path, through which a passage could not be effected without infinite difficulty. The horses, now completely exhausted, served more to retard than to accelerate the progress of the travellers, and they were finally obliged to abandon them in a valley of tolerable pasture and well watered, about seventy-five miles beyond Western Port. Here also they were forced to leave f he packs with the men's wearing apparel, and the Count's mineralogical and botanical collection, taking with them only their blankets and the residue of their bread, which, notwithstanding the allowance had been greatly restricted, did not last longer than four days from this time. From this place, the Count and his companions took, and at all hazards maintained, a direct course to Western Port, in the hope of bringing their sufferings to a close as speedily as possible; but, unfortunately, this course led them for days together through a dense scrub, which it was almost impossible to penetrate. The party was now in a most deplorable condition. Macarthur and Riley, and their attendants, had become so exhausted as to be unable to cope with the difficulties which beset their progress. The Count, being more inured to the fatigue and privations attendant upon a pedestrian journey through the wilds of the inhospitable interior, alone retained possession of his strength; and, although burthened with a load of instruments and papers of forty-five pounds' weight, continued to pioneer his exhausted companions day after day through an almost impervious tea-tree scrub, closely interwoven with climbing grasses,