The Meat Is Cut Into Thin Strips, And Becomes Perfectly Permeated With Smoke.

So soon as all was ready, down went poor Hollow Back.

He was in what is called good working condition, but he had not a vestige of fat about him. The only adipose matter we could obtain from him was by boiling his bones, and the small quantity of oil thus obtained would only fry a few meals of steaks. When that was done we had to fry or parboil them in water. Our favourite method of cooking the horseflesh after the fresh meat was eaten, was by first boiling and then pounding with the axe, tomahawk head, and shoeing hammer, then cutting it into small pieces, wetting the mass, and binding it with a pannikin of flour, putting it into the coals in the frying-pan, and covering the whole with hot ashes. But the flour would not last, and those delicious horse-dampers, though now but things of the past, were by no means relegated to the limbo of forgotten things. The boiled-up bones, hoofs, shanks, skull, etc., of each horse, though they failed to produce a sufficient quantity of oil to please us, yet in the cool of the night resolved themselves into a consistent jelly that stank like rotten glue, and at breakfast at least, when this disgusting stuff was in a measure coagulated, we would request one another with the greatest politeness to pass the glue-pot. Had it not been that I was an inventor of transcendent genius, even this last luxury would have been debarred us. We had been absent from civilisation, so long, that our tin billies, the only boiling utensils we had, got completely worn or burnt out at the bottoms, and as the boilings for glue and oil must still go on, what were we to do with billies with no bottoms? Although as an inventor I can allow no one to depreciate my genius, I will admit there was but one thing that could be done, and those muffs Tietkens and Jimmy actually advised me to do what I had invented, which was simply - all great inventions are simple - to cover the bottoms with canvas, and embed the billies half-way up their sides in cold ashes, and boil from the top instead of the bottom, which of course we did, and these were our glue- and flesh-pots. The tongue, brains, kidneys, and other titbits of course were eaten first.

On the 19th some natives began to yell near the camp, but three only made their appearance. They were not only the least offensive and most civil we had met on any of our travels, but they were almost endearing in their welcome to us. We gave them some of the bones and odd pieces of horse-meat, which seemed to give them great satisfaction, and they ate some pieces raw. They were in undress uniform, and "free as Nature first made man, ere the vile laws of servitude began, when, wild in the woods, the noble savage ran." They were rather good, though extremely wild-looking young men. One of them had splendid long black curls waving in the wind, hanging down nearly to his middle; the other two had chignons. They remained with us only about three hours. The day was windy, sand-dusty, and disagreeable. One blast of wind blew my last thermometer, which was hanging on a sapling, so violently to the ground that it broke.

Mr. Tietkens had been using a small pair of bright steel plyers. When the endearing natives were gone it was discovered that the plyers had departed also; it was only Christian charity to hope that they had NOT gone together. It was evident that Mr. Gosse must have crossed an eastern part of Lake Amadeus to get here from Gill's Range, and as he had a wagon, I thought I would be so far beholden to him as to make use of his crossing-place.

We left the Rock on the 23rd, but only going four miles for a start, we let the horses go back without hobbles to feed for the night. Where the lake was crossed Mr. Gosse had laid down a broad streak of bushes and boughs, and we crossed without much difficulty, the crossing-place being very narrow. Leaving the dray track at the lower end of King's Creek of my former journey, we struck across for Penny's Creek, four miles east of it, where the splendid rocky reservoir is, and where there was delicious herbage for the horses. We had now a fair and fertile tract to the River Finke, discovered by me previously, getting water and grass at Stokes's, Bagot's, Trickett's, and Petermann's Creeks; fish and water at Middleton's and Rogers's Pass and Ponds. Thence down the Palmer by Briscoe's Pass, and on to the junction of the Finke, where there is a fine large water-hole at the junction.

On the 10th of July travelling down the Finke near a place called Crown Point on the telegraph line, we saw a white man riding towards us. He proved to be a Mr. Alfred Frost, the owner of several fine horse-teams and a contractor to supply loading for the Government to several telegraph stations farther up the line. I had known him before; he was most kind. He was going ahead to select a camp for his large party, but upon our telling him of our having nothing but horse-flesh, he immediately returned with us, and we met the advancing teams. He called a halt, ordered the horses to be unyoked, and we were soon laughing and shaking hands with new-found friends. Food was the first order Mr. Frost gave, and while some were unyoking the horses, some were boiling the tea-billies, while old Frost was extracting a quart of rum for us from a hogshead. But we did not indulge in more than a sip or two, as bread and meat was what we cared for most.

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