we now mustered a strong force. Lizzie would hardly allow us time to
swallow our breakfast, so impatient was she to be under weigh; and one
wretched man, lingering for a moment later than the rest of us, over a
slice of beef and damper, found himself the object of general attention,
when our little guide stamped her foot, and, trembling with indignation,
said --

"Plenty big bingey (belly) that fellow. Baal he been fill 'em like 'it
sundown!"

The travelling was worse than ever now; up and down steep ravines in which
the tangled scrub grew so thickly that progress was almost impossible, and
we were compelled to wade along the bed of the creek; now tripping over a
sharp ledge of rock, now floundering up to the waistbelt in a treacherous
hole; past the base of a beautiful waterfall, where the action of the
torrent had worn a hollow basin in the rock, in which it sparkled, cool,
transparent, and prismatic, in the rays of the burning sun, and where the
view, so unlike the generality of Australian scenery, was perfectly
bewitching; on, through more scrub, through swamps, and over stiff
mountains, wet, draggled, moody, and cross, crawling along after the little
black figure in front, that held steadily on its way, as though hunger and
fatigue were to it things unknown.

At length, about three o'clock in the afternoon, we found ourselves in a
sort of natural funnel in the rock, the end of which grew narrower and
narrower as it wound about in curious curves.

"Close up now," said Lizzie, "water sit down along of other side; baal
black fellow get away."