d received their loads, now indeed light enough, and we went off
again into the scrubs, riding and walking by turns, our lives entirely
depending on the camels; Jimmy had told us they were calmly feeding
upon some of the trees and bushes in the neighbourhood when he got
them. That they felt the pangs of thirst there can be no doubt--and
what animal can suffer thirst like a camel?--as whenever they were
brought to the camp they endeavoured to fumble about the empty
water-bags, tin pannikins, and any other vessel that ever had
contained water.

The days of toil, the nights of agony and feverish unrest, that I
spent upon this journey I can never forget. After struggling through
the dense scrubs all day we were compelled perforce to remain in them
all night. It was seldom now we spoke to one another, we were too
thirsty and worn with lassitude to converse, and my reflections the
night after the last horse died, when we had come nearly 200 miles
without water, of a necessity assumed a gloomy tinge, although I am
the least gloomy-minded of the human race, for we know that the tone
of the mind is in a great measure sympathetic with the physical
condition of the body. If the body is weak from exhaustion and
fatigue, the brain and mind become dull and sad, and the thoughts of a
wanderer in such a desolate region as this, weary with a march in heat
and thirst from daylight until dark, who at last sinks upon the heated
ground to watch and wait until the blazing sunlight of another day,
perhaps, may bring him to some place of rest, cannot be otherwise than
of a mournful kind. The mind is forced back upon itself, and becomes
filled with an endless chain of thoughts which wander through the
vastness of the star-bespangled spheres; for here, the only things to
see, the only things to love, and upon which the eye may gaze, and
from which the beating heart may gather some feelings of repose, are
the glittering bands of brilliant stars shining in the azure vault of
heaven. From my heated couch of sandy earth I gazed helplessly but
rapturously upon them, wondering at the enormity of occupied and
unoccupied space, revolving thoughts of past, present, and future
existencies, and of how all that is earthly fadeth away. But can that
be the case with our world itself, with the sun from which it obtains
its light and life, or with the starry splendours of the worlds beyond
the sun? Will they, can they, ever fade? They are not spiritual;
celest