21st June.
At 10.0 a.m. left the principal camp on the Victoria with a party
consisting of Messrs. H. Gregory, Elsey, and Dr. Mueller, Robert Bowman,
Charles Dean, and J. Melville, seven saddle and twenty-seven pack horses,
conveying five months' provisions of salt pork and meat biscuits, and six
months' supply of flour, tea, sugar, coffee, etc., twenty-six pounds of
gunpowder, sixty pounds bullets, 1 hundredweight shot, 5000 caps, etc.
Proceeding up the left bank of the Victoria, crossed the ridge at back of
Steep Head, and at 3.15 p.m. camped about three-quarters of a mile above
it on the bank of the river.
22nd June (Sunday).
At 7.30 a.m. left the camp and followed the river up for ten miles, and
then along a small creek four miles south-south-east; but the country
proving very steep and rocky, returned one mile and camped at 3 p.m.
23rd June.
Left the camp at 7.0 a.m., and returned down the valley of the creek to
the river, and kept along the bank of the Victoria to the junction of
Beagle Creek. We ascended for five miles, and camped at 11.0, as there
was no water between this point and the Victoria at Bynoe Range on the
Beagle Valley route, and the distance was too great to be commenced at
this late hour of the day.
24th June.
Started at 7.0 a.m., and steered east through an open box forest nearly
level and well grassed. The grass had been burnt off by the blacks, but
had shot up to a foot in height. Passed to the south of the Fitzroy
Range; the valley between it and Stokes' Range similar to Beagle Valley,
and about four miles wide. Keeping close to Stokes' Range, passed behind
some of the detached hills at 4.20 p.m. Reached our old camp of the 5th
May, and found the stores we had left secreted in the rocks undisturbed.
25th June.
Having distributed the stores which had been left here in May among the
several pack-horses, at 7.15 a.m. resumed our route up the river, and
crossed to the right bank two miles above the creek we intended to
ascend, and camped at 11.0. Marked a large gum-tree Delta V.
Latitude by b and a2 Centauri 15 degrees 39 minutes 17 seconds.