This Was A Very Pretty And Picturesque Place.

Mount Gould rose with rough and timbered sides to a pointed ridge about two miles from the camp. The banks of the creek were shaded with pretty trees, and numerous acacia and other leguminous bushes dotted the grassy flooded lands on either side of the creek.

The beauty of the place could scarcely be enjoyed, as the weather was so hot and the flies such awful plagues, that life was almost a misery, and it was impossible to obtain a moment's enjoyment of the scene. The thermometer had stood at 103 degrees in the shade in the afternoon, and at night the mosquitoes were as numerous and almost more annoying than the flies in the day. The following day being Sunday, we rested, and at a very early hour crowds of black men, women, boys, and children, came swarming up to the camp. But the men were not allowed to enter. There was no resisting the encroachments of the girls; they seemed out of their wits with delight at everything they saw; they danced and pirouetted about among the camels' loads with the greatest glee. Everything with them was, "What name?" They wanted to know the name of everything and everybody, and they were no wiser when they heard it. Some of these girls and boys had faces, in olive hue, like the ideal representation of angels; how such beauty could exist amongst so poor a grade of the human race it is difficult to understand, but there it was. Some of the men were good-looking, but although they had probably been beautiful as children, their beauty had mostly departed. There were several old women at the camp. They were not beautiful, but they were very quiet and retiring, and seemed to feel gratification at the pleasures the young ones enjoyed. Sometimes they would point out some pretty girl or boy and say it was hers, or hers; they were really very like human beings, though of course no one can possibly be a real human being who does not speak English. A custom among the natives here is to cicatrise in parallel horizontal lines the abdomens of the female portion of the community. The scars of the old being long healed left only faint raised lines, intended to hide any natural corrugations; this in a great measure it did, but the younger, especially those lately operated on, had a very unsightly appearance. Surely these people cannot deem these the lines of beauty. These young ladies were much pleased at beholding their pretty faces in a looking-glass for the first time. They made continual use of the word "Peterman." This was a word I had first heard from the natives of the Rawlinson Range, upon my last horse expedition of 1874. It seems to signify, where are you going? or where have you come from? or something to that effect; and from the fact of their using it, it appears that they must speak the same language as the natives of the Rawlinson, which is over 600 miles away to the eastward, and is separated from their territory by a vast and dreary desert.

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