Mount Midway, near Kilmore, May 28th, 1853.

We started once more up the country on May 6th, our first destination a new digging called M'lvor, and thence to Bendigo. We dined with His Excellency the evening before our departure, and he very kindly wrote down in my memorandum-book the best route for us, having himself been up to the diggings recently. He also gave us a general letter of introduction to the Commissioners at all the diggings, requesting them to give us all the assistance they can in our inquiries.

The weather was very fine when we set off, but that very day it broke up; heavy rain came dashing down, and the roads, absorbing it rapidly, were immediately in a most discouraging state. This is a grand fatality here, that the roads and everything in the colony have been so entirely neglected by the Government. The labour of getting up a country with no roads consumes all your time. As we meant to winter at the diggings, we determined to take up sufficient stores; but we had been calculating on sufficient fine weather, and being overtaken by the wet, we have been nearly a month on the way, and have only made forty miles out of the seventy-five to M'Ivor.

During this time we have broken our axletree four times, and have spent 13l. in repairs of it.