When We Turned Them Out, They Preferred To Stand Still, Rather Than Roam About Among The Rocks And Boulders For Food.

The day was cool; the southern horizon, the only one we could see, was bounded entirely by red sandhills and casuarina timber.

The horses ate nothing all night, and stood almost where they were hobbled.

In this region, and in the heat of summer, the moment horses, no matter how fat and fresh they may be, are taken away from their companions to face the fearful country that they know is before them, they begin to fret and fall away visibly. They will scarcely eat, and get all the weaker in consequence, and then they require twice as much water as they otherwise would if their insides were partly filled with grass. When I released our three from the hobbles this morning, they immediately pretended to feed; but this old ruse has been experienced before, and time was now up, to move on again. They were very thirsty, and nearly emptied the rock basin, where we had a kind of bath before starting. Along the foot-hills over which we were obliged to travel, the country was much rougher than yesterday; so much so, that I kept away as much as possible. At twenty miles we turned up a creek-channel, which proved to be a dreadful gorge, being choked up with huge boulders of red and white granite. Among these I found a fine rock tarn; indeed, I might call it a marble bath, for the rock was almost pure white, and perfectly bare all round. The water was considerably over our heads, and felt as cold as ice. It was a dreadful place to get horses up to, and two of them fell two or three times on the glassy, shelving, and slippery rocks. The old grey, Buggs, hurt himself a good deal.

Time seems to fly in these places, except when you want it to do so, and by the time the horses got down from the water the day was nearly gone. The feed for them was very little better than at our last night's camp, nor was the glen any less stony or rough. The day was 12 degrees hotter than yesterday; the thermometer indicated 104 degrees. The ants in this glen were frightful; they would not allow me a moment's rest anywhere. There was but one solitary eucalyptus or gum-tree, and in its scanty shade they swarmed in countless myriads. The sun poured his fiery beams full down upon us, and it was not until he departed over the cliffs to the west that we had a moment's respite; the place was a perfect oven.

I passed the time mostly in the marble bath, and then took a walk up to the top of the range and could see the hills I desired to visit; they now bore nearly south-west. So long as the sun's rays were pouring down upon their unsheltered hides, the horses would not attempt to eat, but when he departed they fed a little on the coarse vegetation. This glen, like all the others in this range, swarmed with pigeons, and we got enough for breakfast at one shot. During the hot months, I believe whites could live entirely on pigeons in this range. At the camp at Sladen Water they came to the water in clouds, their very numbers sometimes preventing us getting a good shot, and we had been living entirely on them, for now we had no other meat. Unfortunately, our ammunition is almost exhausted, but so long as it lasts we shall have birds. When it is gone we must eat horseflesh, and should have been driven to do so before now, only for these birds. I have an old horse now fattening for the knife, and I am sorry, i.e. happy, to say, whenever I inspect him he looks better. The one I mean is the old sideways-going Terrible Billy. Poor old creature! To work so many years as he has done for man, and then to be eaten at last, seems a hard fate; but who or what can escape that inexorable shadow, death?

It may be the destiny of some of ourselves to be eaten; for I fully believe the natives of these regions look upon all living organisms as grist for their insatiable mills. As night came on, I was compelled to lie down at last, but was so bitten and annoyed by the ants, that I had to keep moving about from place to place the whole night long, while the [in]sensible Jimmy lay sleeping and snoring, though swarmed over and almost carried away by the ants, as peacefully as though he had gone to rest under the canopy of costly state, and lulled with sounds of sweetest melody. I could not help moralising, as I often stood near him, wondering at his peace and placidity, upon the differences of our mental and physical conditions: here was one human being, young and strong, certainly, sleeping away the, to me, dreary hours of night, regaining that necessary vigour for the toils of the coming day, totally oblivious of swarms of creeping insects, that not only crawled all over him, but constantly bit into his flesh; while another, who prided himself perhaps too much upon the mental powers bestowed by God upon him, was compelled by the same insects to wander through the whole night, from rock to rock and place to place, unable to remain for more than a moment or two anywhere; and to whom sleep, under such circumstances, was an utter impossibility. Not, indeed, that the loss of sleep troubles me, for if any one could claim to be called the sleepless one, it would be I - that is to say, when engaged in these arduous explorations, and curtained by night and the stars; but, although I can do without sleep, I require a certain amount of horizontal repose, and this I could not obtain in this fearful glen. It was, therefore, with extreme pleasure that I beheld the dawn, and:

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