at his fullest speed, with his head towards some overhanging branches,
under which he might have passed with impunity, but they must have
crushed Warri EN ROUTE.

Luckily I was just in time to get Highlander between the tree and the
camel, and so saved a nasty accident. Besides these small troubles,
Breaden and Godfrey were suffering agonies from "sandy blight," a sort of
ophthalmia, which is made almost unbearable by the clouds of flies, the
heat, the glare, and the dust. Breaden luckily was able to rest in a dark
room at Flora Valley and recovered, or at least sufficiently so to be
able to travel; Godfrey was very bad indeed, quite blind and helpless. At
night we pitched his mosquito-net for him--for these insects are simply
ravenous, and would eat one alive or send one mad in this part of the
country--and made him as comfortable as possible; in the morning, until I
had bathed his eyes with warm water he was blinded by the matter running
from them: then during the day he sat blindfolded on The Monk, one of the
horses--a most unpleasant condition for travelling.

Fortunately it was not for long, for soon we cut the Sturt Creek, and,
following it, reached the Denison Downs Homestead--the last settlement to
the southward, and I should say the most out-of-the-way habitation in
Australia of to-day. The nearest neighbours are nearly one hundred miles
by road, at Flora Valley; in every other direction there is a blank,
hundreds of miles in extent. A solitary enough spot in all conscience!
Yet for the last ten years two men have lived here, taking their chances
of sickness, drought, floods, and natives; raising cattle in peace and
contentment. Terribly rough, uncouth chaps, of course? Not a bit of
it!--two men, gentlemen by birth and education, one the brother of a
bishop, the other a man who started life as an artist in Paris. A rough
life does not necessarily make a rough man, and here we have the proof,