At Youldeh Our Guide Had So Excited My Curiosity About This Place, That I Was Most Anxious To Reach It.

Jimmy said it was not very far off.

On the night of the 26th March, just as it was getting dark and having left Chimpering twenty-five miles behind us, we entered a piece of bushy mulga country, the bushes being so thick that we had great difficulty in forcing our way through it in the dark. Our guide seemed very much in the dark also; his movements were exceedingly uncertain, and I could see by the stars that we were winding about to all points of the compass. At last old Jimmy stopped and said we had reached the place where Pylebung ought to be, but it was not; and here, he said, pointing to the ground, was to be our wurley, or camp, for the night. When I questioned him, and asked where the water was, he only replied, which way? This question I was altogether unable to answer, and I was not in a very amiable frame of mind, for we had been traversing frightful country of dense scrubs all day in parching thirst and broiling heat. So I told Nicholls to unpack the camels while I unsaddled the horses. All the animals seemed over-powered with lassitude and exhaustion; the camels immediately lay down, and the horses stood disconsolately close to them, now no longer terrified at their proximity.

Nicholls and I extended our rugs upon the ground and lay down, and then we discovered that old Jimmy had left the camp, and thought he had given us the slip in the dark.

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