e thermometer
in the early dawn generally indicating 18 degrees while in the middle
of the day the heat was oppressive.

The flies were still about us, in persecuting myriads. The nature of
the country during this march was similar to that previously
described, being quite open, it rolled along in ceaseless undulations
of sand. The only vegetation besides the ever-abounding spinifex was a
few blood-wood-trees on the tops of some of the red heaps of sand,
with an occasional desert oak, an odd patch or clump of mallee-trees,
standing desolately alone, and perhaps having a stunted specimen or
two of the quandong or native peach-tree, and the dreaded Gyrostemon
growing among them. The region is so desolate that it is horrifying
even to describe. The eye of God looking down on the solitary caravan,
as with its slow, and snake-like motion, it presents the only living
object around, must have contemplated its appearance on such a scene
with pitying admiration, as it forced its way continually on; onwards
without pausing, over this vast sandy region, avoiding death only by
motion and distance, until some oasis can be found. Slow as eternity
it seems to move, but certain we trust as death; and truly the
wanderer in its wilds may snatch a fearful joy at having once beheld
the scenes, that human eyes ought never again to see. On the 15th of
June we found a hollow in which were two or three small salt-lake
beds, but these were perfectly dry; on the 16th also another solitary
one was seen, and here a few low rises lay across a part of the
eastern horizon. On the 17th a little water left in the bottom of a
bucket overnight was frozen into a thick cake in the morning, the
thermometer indicating 18 degrees. The nights I pass in these fearful
regions are more dreadful than the days, for "night is the time for
care, brooding o'er days misspent, when the pale spectre of despair
comes to our lonely tent;" and often when I lay me down I fall into a
dim and death-like trance, wakeful, yet "dreaming dreams no mortals
had ever dared to dream before."

The few native inhabitants of these regions occasionally burn every
portion of their territories, and on a favourably windy day a spinifex
fire might run on for scores of miles. We occasionally cross such
desolated spaces, where every species of vegetation has been by flames
devoured. Devoured they are, but not demolished, as out of the roots
and ashes of their former natures, phoenix-like, the