Moving North, We Went Over A Mass Of Open-Rolling Sandhills With Triodia, And That Other Abominable Plant I Call The Sage-Bush.

In appearance it is something like low tea-tree, but it differs entirely from that family, inasmuch as it utterly abhors water.

Although it is not spiny like the triodia, it is almost as annoying, both to horse and man, as it grows too high for either to step over without stretching, and it is too strong to be easily moved aside; hence, horse-tracks in this region go zigzag.

At thirty-five miles the open sandhills ceased, and scrubs came on. It was a cool and cloudy day. We passed through a few groves of the pretty desert oak-trees, which I have not seen for some time; a few native poplars and currajongs were also seen to-day. The horses wandered a long way back in the night.

After travelling fifteen miles, we were now rapidly approaching the range, and we debouched upon a eucalyptus flat, which was covered with a beautiful carpet of verdure, and not having met with gumtrees for some time, those we saw here, looked exceedingly fine, and the bark dazzling white. Here we found a clay crab-hole. These holes are so-called in parts of Australia, usually near the coasts, where freshwater crabs and crayfish bury themselves in the bottoms of places where rain water often lodges; the holes these creatures make are tubes of two, three, or four feet deep, whose sides and bottom are cemented, and which hold water like a glass bottle; in these tubes they remain till rain again lodges above, when for a time they are released.

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