I Selected Peter Nicholls To Accompany Me.

I found the boiling-point of water at the camp was 211 degrees making its altitude above the sea 509 feet.

The sandhills were about 100 feet high on the average.

The two camels and the calf, were sent to me by Sir Thomas Elder, from Adelaide, while I was at Fowler's Bay, by an Afghan named Saleh Mahomet, who returned to, and met me at, Beltana, by the ordinary way of travellers. There was only a riding-saddle for the cow, the bull having come bare-backed; I therefore had to invent a pack- or baggage-saddle for him, and I venture to assert that 999,999 people out of every million would rather be excused the task. In this work I was ably seconded by Mr. Richards, who did most of the sewing and pad-making, but Mr. Armstrong, one of the owners and manager of the Fowler's Bay Station, though he supplied me in profusion with every other requisite, would not let me have the size of iron I wished, and I had to take what I could get, he thinking it the right size; and unfortunately that which I got for the saddle-trees was not stout enough, and, although in other respects the saddle was a brilliant success, though made upon a totally different principle from that of an Afghan's saddle, when the animal was loaded, the weakness of the iron made it continually widen, and in consequence the iron pressed down on the much-enduring creature's body and hurt him severely.

We frequently had to stop, take his load and saddle off and bend the iron closer together again, so as to preserve some semblance of an arch or rather two arches over his back, one before and one behind his hump. Every time Nicholls and I went through this operation we were afraid the iron would give, and snap in half with our pressure, and so it would have done but that the fiery rays of the sun kept it almost at a glowing heat. This and the nose ropes and buttons getting so often broken, together with making new buttons from pieces of stick, caused us many harassing delays.

On the 24th of March, 1875, we bade good-bye to the friends that had accompanied us to this place, and who all started to return to the bay the same day. With Peter Nicholls, old Jimmy as guide, the two camels and calf, and three horses, I turned my back upon the Youldeh camp, somewhat late in the day. Nicholls rode the old cow, Jimmy and I riding a horse each, the third horse carrying a load of water. Two of these horses were the pick of the whole mob I had; they were still terribly frightened at the camels, and it was almost impossible to sit my horse Chester when the camels came near him behind; the horse carrying the water followed the two riding-horses, but towards dusk he got frightened and bolted away into the scrubs, load of water and all. We had only come seven miles that afternoon, and it was our first practical acquaintance with camels; Jimmy and I had continually to wait till Nicholls and the camels, made their appearance, and whenever Nicholls came up he was in a fearful rage with them. The old cow that he was riding would scarcely budge for him at all. If he beat her she would lie down, yell, squall, spit, and roll over on her saddle, and behave in such a manner that, neither of us knowing anything about camels, we thought she was going to die. The sandhills were oppressively steep, and the old wretch perspired to such a degree, and altogether became such an unmanageable nuisance, that I began to think camels could not be half the wonderful animals I had fondly imagined.

The bull, Mustara, behaved much better. He was a most affectionate creature, and would kiss people all day long; but the Lord help any one who would try to kiss the old cow, for she would cover them all over with - well, we will call it spittle, but it is worse than that. The calf would kiss also when caught, but did not care to be caught too often. Mustara had a good heavy load - he followed the cow without being fastened; the calf, with great cunning, not relishing the idea of leaving Youldeh, would persistently stay behind and try and induce his mother not to go on; in this he partially succeeded, for by dusk, just as I found I had lost the pack-horse with the water, and was waiting till Nicholls, who was following our horse tracks, came up to us, we had travelled at no better speed than a mile an hour since we left the camp. The two remaining horses were so restless that I was compelled to stand and hold them while waiting, old Jimmy being away in the darkness to endeavour to find the missing one. By the time Nicholls arrived with the camels, guided now by the glare of a large fire of a Mus conditor's nest which old Jimmy ignited, the horse had been gone about two hours; thus our first night's bivouac was not a pleasant one. There was nothing that the horses would eat, and if they had been let go, even in hobbles, in all probability we should never have seen them again. Old Jimmy returned after a fruitless search for the absent horse. The camels would not feed, but lay down in a sulky fit, the two horses continually snorting and endeavouring to break away; and thus the night was passing away, when we heard the tinkle of a bell - the horse we had lost having a bell on his neck - and Jimmy and Nicholls went away through the darkness and scrubs in the direction it proceeded from. I kept up a large fire to guide them, not that old Jimmy required such artificial aid, but to save time; in about an hour they returned with the missing horse.

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