had
known of its existence before, it being not twenty-five miles from our
poison camp, and that some good acacia bushes grew here also; as it
was, I made no use of it. The weather being cool, and the camels
having filled themselves with water at the deep well, they would not
drink. That afternoon we got into a hollow where there was a low ridge
of flat-topped cliffs, and a good deal of mulga timber in it. Very
likely in times of rain a flow of water might be found here, if there
ever are times of rain in such a region. We just cleared the valley by
night, having travelled nearly twenty miles. My latitude here was 23
degrees 56' 20" and not desiring to go any farther north, I inclined
my course a little southerly--that is to say, in an east by south
direction.

We had left the deep well on the 9th June, and not until ten days of
continuous travelling had been accomplished--it being now the
18th--did we see any more water. That evening we reached a little
trifling water-channel, with a few small scattered white gum-trees,
coming from a low stony mulga-crowned ridge, and by digging in it we
found a slight soakage of water. Here we dug a good-sized tank, which
the water partly filled, and this enabled us to water all the camels.
They had travelled 230 miles from our deep well. For the last two or
three days poor old Buzoe, Alec Ross's riding cow, has been very ill,
and almost unable to travel; she is old and worn out, poor old
creature, having been one of Sir Thomas Elder's original importations
from India. She had always been a quiet, easy-paced old pet, and I was
very much grieved to see her ailing. I did not like to abandon her,
and we had to drag her with a bull camel and beat her along, until she
crossed this instalment of Gibson's Desert: but she never left this
spot, which I have named Buzoe's Grave. I don't think this old cow had
been poisoned--at least she never showed any signs of it; I believe it
was sheer old age and decay that assailed her at last. The position of
this welcome watered spot was in latitude 24 degrees 33', and
longitude 123 degrees 57'. It was by wondrous good fortune that we
came upon it, and it was the merest chance that any water was there.
In another day or two there would have been none; as it was, only a
little rainwater, that had not quite ceased to drain down the
half-stony, half-sandy bed of the little gully, was all we got. The
weather had been very disagreeable for some days past, th