"Mud and oatmeal for breakfast," September 14th; truly the sage spoke who
remarked, "What does not fatten will fill." Such was our fare, and the
only doubt we had was lest the compound should be turned into brick by
the sun's heat! However, it was sustaining enough to last us all day,
occupied in tracking. Two dry wells, connected by a well-trodden pad half
a mile long, rewarded our labours; and here we had the conviction forced
upon us that the blacks themselves were hard pressed: we could see where
dust and dirt had been recently removed from the bottom of the wells,
both of which were over fifteen feet in depth, and one over twenty. Were
the natives hard pressed for water, or had they heard of our coming, and
were by smokes guiding us to empty wells? Unpleasant speculation, when
one's tanks contain nothing but a nasty brown liquid, and the country
looks as if it had not known rain for years!

September 15th. Another smoke to the North-East; again we steer for it,
as if following a will-o'-the-wisp. The continued semi-starvation, hard
work, and heat was beginning to leave its mark. None of our friends or
relatives would have recognised us now! Clothed in filthy rags, with
unkempt hair and beards, begrimed with mud, and burnt black by the sun
wherever its rays could penetrate our armour of dirt, we were indeed a
pretty lot. That night we tied the camels down--there was no feed for
them; besides, I wished them handy in the morning, for we could not be
far from natives now unless the smoke had deceived us. The next day the
desolation of the country was increased by vast areas of burnt ground,
from which rose clouds of dust and ashes--no gravel was here to arrest
the onslaught of the wind upon the sand. Towards evening we were doomed
to experience fresh discouragement, for in front of us, seen from rising
ground, there stretched ridge upon ridge of barren sand, black from the
charred remains of spinifex. To tackle those ridges in our then plight