The Latter Give A Most Extraordinary Appearance To The Scenes They Adorn, For They Cheat The Eye Of The Traveller Into The Belief That He Is Passing Through Tracts Of Alluvial Soil, And Gazing, Upon The Water-Indicating Gum-Trees.

This night we reached a most abominable encampment; there was nothing that the camels could eat, and the ground was entirely covered with great bunches of spinifex.

Before us, and all along the western horizon, we had a black-looking and scrubby rise of very high sandhills; each of us noticed its resemblance to those sandhills which had confronted us to the north and east when at Youldeh. By observation we found that we were upon the same latitude, but had reached a point in longitude 500 miles to the west of it. It is highly probable that no water exists in a straight line between the two places. Shortly before evening, Mr. Young was in advance steering, but he kept so close under the sun - it being now so near the equinox, the sun set nearly west, and our course being 21 degrees south of west - I had to go forward and tell him that he was not steering rightly. Of course he became indignant, and saying, "Perhaps you'll steer, then, if you don't think I can!" he handed me the compass. I took it in silence and steered more southerly, in the proper direction of our course; this led us over a long white ridge of sand, and brought us to the hollow where, as I said before, we had such a wretched encampment.

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