The Botanical Name Of This Plant Is Eremophila Scoparia.

At fifty miles from Colona and eighty-five from the bay, we reached a salt lagoon, which, though several

Miles long, and perhaps a mile wide, Mr. Murray's black boy informed us was the footmark or track of a monstrous animal or snake, that used to haunt the neighbourhood of this big plain, and that it had been driven by the Cockata blacks out of the mountains to the north, the Musgrave Ranges of my last expedition, and which are over 400 miles from the bay. He added that the creature had crawled down to the coast, and now lived in the sea. So here was reliable authority for the existence of a sea serpent. We had often heard tales from the blacks, when sitting round our camp fires at night, about this wonderful animal, and whenever any native spoke about it, it was always in a mysterious undertone. What the name of this monster was, I cannot now remember; but there were syllables enough in it to make a word as long as the lagoon itself. The tales that were told of it, the number of natives it had devoured, how such and such a black fellow's father had encountered and speared it, and how it had occasionally created floods all over the country when it was angry, would have made an excellent novel, which might be produced under the title of a "Black Romance." When we laughed at, or joked this young black fellow who now accompanied us, on the absurdity of his notions, he became very serious, for to him and his co-religionists it was no laughing matter. Another thing was rather strange, and that was, how these coast natives should know there were any mountains to the north of them. I knew it, because I had been there and found them; but that they should know it was curious, for they have no intercourse with the tribes of natives in the country to the north of them; indeed it required a good deal of persuasion to induce the young blacks who accompanied us to go out to Youldeh; and if it had not been that an old man called Jimmy had been induced by Mr. Richards to go with the camels in advance, I am quite sure the young ones would not have gone at all.

After crossing the salt lagoon or animals' track, and going five miles farther, about north-north-east, we arrived at some granite rocks amongst some low hills, which rose up out of the plain, where some rock water-holes existed, and here we found the two blacks that had preceded us, encamped with the camels. This pretty little place was called Pidinga; the eye was charmed with flowering shrubs about the rocks, and green grass. As the day was very hot, we erected tarpaulins with sticks, this being the only shade to sit under. There were a few hundred acres of good country round the rocks; the supply of water was limited to perhaps a couple of thousand gallons. From Pidinga our route to Youldeh lay about north-north-west, distant thirty-three miles. For about twenty-five miles we traversed an entirely open plain, similar to that just described, and mostly covered with the waving broom bushes; but now upon our right hand, to the north, and stretching also to the west, was a dark line of higher ground formed of sandhills and fringed with low scrub, and timber of various kinds, such as cypress pines (callitris), black oak (casuarinas) stunted mallee (eucalyptus), and a kind of acacia called myal. This new feature, of higher ground, formed the edge of the plain, and is the southern bank of a vast bed of sandhill country that lies between us and the Musgrave Ranges nearly 300 miles to the north.

Having reached the northern edge of the plain we had been traversing, we now entered the bed of sandhills and scrub which lay before us, and, following the tracks of the two black fellows with the camels, as there was no road to Youldeh, we came in five miles to a spot where, without the slightest indication to point out such a thing, except that we descended into lower ground, there existed a shallow native well in the sandy ground of a small hollow between the red sandhills, and this spot the blacks said was Youldeh. The whole region was glowing with intense heat, and the sand was so hot, that neither the camels nor the horses could endure to remain standing in the sun, but so soon as they were unpacked and unsaddled, sought the shade of the large and numerous leguminous bushes which grew all round the place. As there were five whites and four blacks, we had plenty of hands to set about the different tasks which had to be performed. In the first place we had to dig out the old well; this some volunteered to do, while others erected an awning with tarpaulins, got firewood, and otherwise turned the wild and bushy spot into a locality suitable for a white man's encampment. Water was easily procurable at a depth of between three and four feet, and all the animals drank as much as they desired, being watered with canvas buckets; the camels appeared as though they never would be satisfied.

It was only their parching thirst that induced the horses to remain anywhere near the camels, and immediately they got sufficient water, they de-camped, though short-hobbled, at a gallop over the high red sandhills from whence we had come; my riding-horse, Chester, the worst of the mob, went nearly mad at the approach of the camels. There was not a sign of a blade of grass, or anything else that horses could eat, except a few yellow immortelles of a large coarse description, and these they did not care very much for. The camels, on the contrary, could take large and evidently agreeable mouthfuls of the leaves of the great bushes of the Leguminosae, which abounded.

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