separations it might have sunk into a rather tame and monotonous affair. Now at length, however, a Titanic obstacle had to be encountered. Mount Disappointment (of which Mount Macedon is a continuation) stretched across the track, as if to defy further progress. For a while they nobly persevered in hewing their way through the dense, tangled, and apparently interminable brushwood, being animated by the assurance of Hume that the opposing barrier could be nothing else than the Dividing Range, which betokened the near termination of their labours. Unfortunately the life and soul of the expedition, now more than ever indispensable to its success, here met with a disabling accident from a stake. The way through the scrub had to be abandoned, and a more circuitous route followed. The most serious difficulty on the march was a boggy creek in the locality where the town of Kilmore now stands. Here again an attempt was made to throw up the undertaking and return home. Hume, feeling certain in his own mind that they could not have much further to go, entered into a compact with the discontents, engaging to turn back in the course of two or three days should the goal of the journey fail to come in view within that period. On the same day, the 13th December, the Dividing Range, in this part known as the Big Hill, was finally crossed, and all difficulties came to an end. Hume, having proceeded a short way in advance, and keeping an anxious look-out, observed an opening in the mountains and a falling of the land toward the
