On The Seventh Night The Cow, For Which We Had Delayed There, Calved, But Her Bull-Calf Had To Be Destroyed, As We Could Not Delay For It On The March.

The old cow was in very good condition, went off her milk in a day or two, and continued on the journey as though nothing had occurred.

On the eighth we had cold fowl for breakfast, with a modicum of water. On the ninth and tenth days of our march the plains continued, and I began to think we were more liable to die for want of water on them than in the dense and hideous scrubs we had been so anxious to leave behind. Although the region now was all a plain, no views of any extent could be obtained, as the country still rolled on in endless undulations at various distances apart, just as in the scrubs. It was evident that the regions we were traversing were utterly waterless, and in all the distance we had come in ten days, no spot had been found where water could lodge. It was totally uninhabited by either man or animal, not a track of a single marsupial, emu, or wild dog was to be seen, and we seemed to have penetrated into a region utterly unknown to man, and as utterly forsaken by God. We had now come 190 miles from water, and our prospects of obtaining any appeared more and more hopeless. Vainly indeed it seemed that I might say - with the mariner on the ocean - "Full many a green spot needs must be in this wide waste of misery, Or the traveller worn and wan never thus could voyage on." But where was the oasis for us?

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