Almost Every Exploring Party On Short Commons, Records Some Favourite Cookery, Some Dish That Their Souls Loved.

In McKinlay's journey, the dish most in vogue was a kind of "amorphous" black-pudding, made of the carefully-

Saved blood of the bullock, horse, or sheep, as the case might be, boiled with some fat, and seasoned with a little condiment, which being of light carriage, can always be saved for such high occasions. In the present instance, the fat was always devoted to the greasing of the saddles, pack-straps, etc., during the latter part of the journey, when clothing was at a premium; of the explorers themselves, "more aboriginum," who found that the protection it afforded them against cold, wet, and mosquitoes, far outweighed any slight redolence, which, after all, could only be offensive to anyone not equally anointed. At night the Brothers camped on the north side of the Deception, or Jardine, leaving the party again to await their report and return, the cattle being in charge of Scrutton.

'February' 25. - There was an early start this morning, but the little party did not make much headway that day, for after two miles of boggy brushwood country their progress was suddenly arrested by a sea of water, the overflow of a large creek, the outline of which could be traced by a fringe of dark green foliaged trees. Some fruitless attempts were made to cross it at different points. At the narrowest part they could find, on running it down at a spot where the channel was hemmed in by ridges on either side, it was still half-a-mile wide, and running very strongly in the actual channel. They therefore had to resign themselves to wait patiently till the flood went down, apparently not a near prospect, for the rain still continued to drizzle unceasingly.

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