strange, and that was, how these coast natives should know there were
any mountains to the north of them. I knew it, because I had been
there and found them; but that they should know it was curious, for
they have no intercourse with the tribes of natives in the country to
the north of them; indeed it required a good deal of persuasion to
induce the young blacks who accompanied us to go out to Youldeh; and
if it had not been that an old man called Jimmy had been induced by
Mr. Richards to go with the camels in advance, I am quite sure the
young ones would not have gone at all.

After crossing the salt lagoon or animals' track, and going five miles
farther, about north-north-east, we arrived at some granite rocks
amongst some low hills, which rose up out of the plain, where some
rock water-holes existed, and here we found the two blacks that had
preceded us, encamped with the camels. This pretty little place was
called Pidinga; the eye was charmed with flowering shrubs about the
rocks, and green grass. As the day was very hot, we erected tarpaulins
with sticks, this being the only shade to sit under. There were a few
hundred acres of good country round the rocks; the supply of water was
limited to perhaps a couple of thousand gallons. From Pidinga our
route to Youldeh lay about north-north-west, distant thirty-three
miles. For about twenty-five miles we traversed an entirely open
plain, similar to that just described, and mostly covered with the
waving broom bushes; but now upon our right hand, to the north, and
stretching also to the west, was a dark line of higher ground formed
of sandhills and fringed with low scrub, and timber of various kinds,
such as cypress pines (callitris), black oak (casuarinas) stunted
mallee (eucalyptus), and a kind of acacia called myal. This new
feature, of higher ground, formed the edge of the plain, and is the
southern bank of a vast bed of sandhill country that lies between us
and the Musgrave Ranges nearly 300 miles to the north.

Having reached the northern edge of the plain we had been traversing,
we now entered the bed of sandhills and scrub which lay before us,
and, following the tracks of the two black fellows with the camels, as
there was no road to Youldeh, we came in five miles to a spot where,
without the slightest indication to point out such a thing, except
that we descended into lower ground, there existed a shallow native
well in the sandy ground of a small hollow betwee