The Inference To Be Drawn In Such A Case Was, That In All Probability This Kind Of Country Would Remain Unaltered For An Enormous Distance, Possibly To The Very Banks Of The Murchison River Itself.

The question very naturally arose, Could the country be penetrated by man, with only horses at his command, particularly at such a heated time of year?

Oh, would that I had camels! What are horses in such a region and such a heated temperature as this? The animals are not physically capable of enduring the terrors of this country. I was now scarcely a hundred miles from the camp, and the horses had plenty of water up to nearly halfway, but now they looked utterly unable to return. What a strange maze of imagination the mind can wander in when recalling the names of those separated features, the only ones at present known to supply water in this latitude - that is to say, the Murchison River, and this new-found Rawlinson Range, named after two Presidents of the Royal Geographical Society of London. The late and the present, the living and the dead, physically and metaphysically also, are not these features, as the men, separated alike by the great gulf of the unknown, by a vast stretch of that undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns?

The sun went down, and I returned to my youthful companion with the horses below. We were fifty-one miles from the water we had left. The horses were pictures of misery, old Buggs's legs had swelled greatly from the contusions he had received in falling on the slippery rocks. The old black mare which I rode, though a sorry hack, looked worse than I had ever seen her before, and even the youthful and light-heeled and -hearted Diaway hung his head, and one could almost span him round the flanks. The miserable appearance of the animals was caused as much by want of food as want of water, for they have scarcely eaten a mouthful since we left the pass; indeed, all they had seen to eat was not inviting.

We slowly left these desolate ridges behind, and at fifteen miles we camped, Jimmy and I being both hungry and thirsty. Our small supply of water only tantalised, without satisfying us whenever we took a mouthful. We now found we had nothing to eat, at least nothing cooked, and we had to sacrifice a drop of our stock of water to make a Johnny-cake. It was late by the time we had eaten our supper, and I told Jimmy he had better go to sleep if he felt inclined; I then caught and tied up the horses, which had already rambled some distance away. When I got back I found Jimmy had literally taken me at my word; for there he was fast asleep among the coals and ashes of the fire, in which we had cooked our cake. I rolled him over once or twice to prevent him catching fire, but he did not awake.

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