why this denizen of the air and water, should be
sojourning around the waterless encampment of such hapless travellers
as we. The appearance of such a bird raised my hopes, and forced me to
believe that we must be in the neighbourhood of some water, and that
the coming daylight would reveal to us the element which alone could
save us and our unfortunate animals from death. But, alas! how many
human hopes and aspirations are continually doomed to perish
unfulfilled; and were it not that "Hope springs eternal in the human
breast," all faith, all energy, all life, and all success would be at
an end, as then we should know that most of our efforts are futile,
whereas now we hope they may attain complete fruition. Yet, on the
other hand, we learn that the fruit of dreamy hoping is waking blank
despair. We were again in a region of scrubs as bad and as dense as
those I hoped and thought, I had left behind me.

Leaving our waterless encampment, we continued our journey, a
melancholy, thirsty, silent trio. At 150 miles from Wynbring my poor
horse Chester gave in, and could go no farther; for some miles I had
walked, and we had the greatest difficulty in forcing him along, but
now he was completely exhausted and rolled upon the ground in the
death agony of thirst. It was useless to waste time over the
unfortunate creature; it was quite impossible for him ever to rise
again, so in mercy I fired a revolver-bullet at his forehead, as he
gasped spasmodically upon the desert sand: a shiver passed through his
frame, and we left him dead in the lonely spot.

We had now no object but to keep pushing on; our supply of water was
all but gone, and we were in the last stage of thirst and
wretchedness. By the night of that day we had reached a place 168
miles from Wynbring, and in all that distance not a drop of water had
been found. We had one unfortunate horse left, the grey called Formby,
and that poor creature held out as long and on as little water as I am
sure is possible in such a heated and horrid region. On the following
morning the poor beast came up to Nicholls and I, old Jimmy being
after the camels which were close by, and began to smell us, then
stood gazing vacantly at the fire; a thought seemed to strike him that
it was water, and he put his mouth down into the flames. This idea
seems to actuate all animals when in the last stage of thirst. We were
choking with thirst ourselves, but we agreed to sacrifice a small
billyful