other places the water occupies the mid-channel. A horse may walk upon
apparently firm sand towards the stream, when, without a second's
warning, horse and rider may be engulfed in quicksand; but in other
places, where it is firmer, it will quake for yards all round, and
thus give some slight warning.

Crossing safely, and now having the river on my right hand, we
continued our journey, sighting a continuous range of hills to the
north, which ran east and west, and with the glasses I could see the
river trending towards them. I changed my course for a conspicuous
hill in this new line, which brought me to the river again at right
angles; and, having so successfully crossed in the morning, I decided
to try it again. We descended to the bank, and after great trouble
found a spot firm enough and large enough to allow all the horses to
stand upon it at one time, but we could not find a place where they
could climb the opposite bank, for under it was a long reach of water,
and a quagmire extending for more than a mile on either side. Two of
our riding-horses were badly bogged in trying to find a get-away:
finally, we had to cut boughs and sticks, and bridge the place over
with them. Thus we eventually got the horses over one by one without
accident or loss. In four miles we touched on a bend of the river
again, but had no occasion to recross, as it was not in our road. This
day, having wasted so much time in the crossings, we travelled only
fifteen miles. The horizon from this camp was bounded from south-west,
and west, round by north, to north-west, by ranges; which I was not
sorry to perceive. Those to the west, and south-west, were the highest
and most pointed. It appears that the Finke must come under or through
some of those to the north-west. To-day I observed a most beautiful
pigeon, quite new to me; it was of a dark-brown colour, mottled under
the throat and on the breast; it had also a high top-knot. It is
considerably smaller than the Sturt pigeon of his Central Australian
expedition.

It was now the 28th of August, and the temperature of the atmosphere
was getting warmer. Journeying now again about north-west, we reached
a peculiar pointed hill with the Finke at its foot. We passed over the
usual red sandhill country covered with the porcupine grass,
characteristic of the Finke country, and saw a shallow sheet of yellow
rain water in a large clay pan, which is quite an unusual feature in
this part of the world,