red ridges bounded the view. There
were a few dry clay-pans here, but no water. We were sixty miles from
the rock, and to all appearance we might have to go sixty, or a
hundred, or more miles before we should reach water. The only water I
knew on this line of latitude was at the Finke itself, nearly 200
miles away.

We must return to our Rock of Ages, for we must smoke another horse,
and we have no water to push any farther here. We returned to Jimmy
and the horses, and pushed back for the rock as fast as we could. When
we reached the spot where we had left Formby he had wandered away. We
went some distance on his tracks, but could not delay for a further
search. No doubt he had lain down and died not far off. I was sorry
now I had not smoked him before we started, though he was scarcely fit
even for explorers' food. We got back to the rock on the 15th, very
late at night, hungry and thirsty. The next day we worked at a new
smoke-house, and had to shift the camp to it, so as to be near, to
keep a perpetual cloud rising, till the meat is safe. The smoke-house
is formed of four main stakes stuck into the ground and coming nearly
together at the top, with cross sticks all the way down, and covered
over with tarpaulins, so that no smoke can escape except through the
top. The meat is cut into thin strips, and becomes perfectly permeated
with smoke. So soon as all was ready, down went poor Hollow Back. He
was in what is called good working condition, but he had not a vestige
of fat about him. The only adipose matter we could obtain from him was
by boiling his bones, and the small quantity of oil thus obtained
would only fry a few meals of steaks. When that was done we had to fry
or parboil them in water. Our favourite method of cooking the
horseflesh after the fresh meat was eaten, was by first boiling and
then pounding with the axe, tomahawk head, and shoeing hammer, then
cutting it into small pieces, wetting the mass, and binding it with a
pannikin of flour, putting it into the coals in the frying-pan, and
covering the whole with hot ashes. But the flour would not last, and
those delicious horse-dampers, though now but things of the past, were
by no means relegated to the limbo of forgotten things. The boiled-up
bones, hoofs, shanks, skull, etc., of each horse, though they failed
to produce a sufficient quantity of oil to please us, yet in the cool
of the night resolved themselves into a consistent jelly that stank
like ro