er's Bay,
drank the dirty water with avidity. It was early in the day when we
arrived, and so soon as the water was taken, we pushed on towards the
next place, Pylebung. At Youldeh our guide had so excited my curiosity
about this place, that I was most anxious to reach it. Jimmy said it
was not very far off.

On the night of the 26th March, just as it was getting dark and having
left Chimpering twenty-five miles behind us, we entered a piece of
bushy mulga country, the bushes being so thick that we had great
difficulty in forcing our way through it in the dark. Our guide seemed
very much in the dark also; his movements were exceedingly uncertain,
and I could see by the stars that we were winding about to all points
of the compass. At last old Jimmy stopped and said we had reached the
place where Pylebung ought to be, but it was not; and here, he said,
pointing to the ground, was to be our wurley, or camp, for the night.
When I questioned him, and asked where the water was, he only replied,
which way? This question I was altogether unable to answer, and I was
not in a very amiable frame of mind, for we had been traversing
frightful country of dense scrubs all day in parching thirst and
broiling heat. So I told Nicholls to unpack the camels while I
unsaddled the horses. All the animals seemed over-powered with
lassitude and exhaustion; the camels immediately lay down, and the
horses stood disconsolately close to them, now no longer terrified at
their proximity.

Nicholls and I extended our rugs upon the ground and lay down, and
then we discovered that old Jimmy had left the camp, and thought he
had given us the slip in the dark. We had been lying down some time
when the old fellow returned, and in the most voluble and excited
language told us he had found the water; it was, he said, "big one,
watta, mucka, pickaninny;" and in his delight at his success he began
to describe it, or try to do so, in the firelight, on the ground; he
kept saying, "big one, watta--big one, watta--watta go that way, watta
go this way, and watta go that way, and watta go this way," turning
himself round and round, so that I thought it must be a lake or swamp
he was trying to describe. However, we got the camels and horses
resaddled and packed, and took them where old Jimmy led us. The moon
had now risen above the high sandhills that surrounded us, and we soon
emerged upon a piece of open ground where there was a large white
clay-pan, or bare p