The Celebrated Sir Thomas Mitchell, One Of Australia's Early Explorers, In One Of His Journeys, After Finding A Magnificent Country Watered By Large Rivers, And Now The Long-Settled Abodes Of Civilisation, Mounted On A Splendid Horse, Bursts Into An Old Cavalier Song, A Verse Of Which Says:

"A steede, a steede of matchless speede, A sworde of metal keane; All else to noble mindes is drosse; All else on earthe is meane."

I don't know what he would have thought had he been in my case, with his matchless "steede" dead, and in the pangs of thirst himself, his "sworde of metal keane" a useless encumbrance, 168 miles from the last water, and not knowing where the next might be; he would have to admit that the wonderful beasts which now alone remained to us were by no means to be accounted "meane," for these patient and enduring creatures, which were still alive, had tasted no water since leaving Wynbring, and, though the horses were dead and gone, stood up with undiminished powers - appearing to be as well able now to continue on and traverse this wide-spread desert as when they left the last oasis behind. We had nothing now to depend upon but our two "ships of the desert," which we were only just beginning to understand. I had been a firm believer in them from the first, and had many an argument with Nicholls about them; his opinion had now entirely altered. At Youldeh he had called them ugly, useless, lazy brutes, that were not to be compared to horses for a moment; but now that the horses were dead they seemed more agreeable and companionable than ever the horses had been.

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