to guide me to it they were to light a fire. I followed the creek, or
storm channel as I should rather call it, for some four miles; climbing a
tree I could see it apparently continuing for some miles, so, feeling
that I had already had a fair tramp, I noted the direction of the smoke
from the camp and returned to it. As luck would have it, it was the wrong
smoke; Breaden on arriving at the end hill had made a fire, and this the
evening breeze had rekindled; and the camp-fire happened to die down at
the very time it was most needed. In due course I arrived at the hill,
named Mount Colin, after poor Colin Gibson, a Coolgardie friend who had
lately died from typhoid. From the summit a noticeable flat-topped hill,
Mount Cox, named after Ernest Cox, also of Coolgardie, bears 76 degrees
about fifteen miles distant, at the end of a fair-sized range running
S.S.W. Between this range and that from which I was observing, I noticed
several belts of bloodwoods, which might be creeks, but probably are only
flats similar to that crossed by us. Picking up the tracks of the main
party, I followed them to camp, not sorry to have a rest; for it was ten
hours since Godfrey and I had had anything to eat or drink, and the rocks
were rough and the spinifex dense. I mention this, not as illustrating our
hardships, but to show what training will do; any one of us would have
been quite ready to do the day's tramp over again had any necessity
arisen.

That night as I was shooting the stars, by which I found we were in lat.
24 degrees 57 minutes, long. 125 degrees 9 minutes (dead reckoning), I
noticed several bronzewing pigeons flying down the creek which I had
followed, and on which we were camped. In the morning others observed
them flying up the watercourse. As a bronzewing drinks just after dark,
or just before daylight, this was pretty good evidence that water existed
in the direction in which the creek ran--and probably an open pool would
be found. No such luck! for we followed the channel until it no longer