days' rest, in the first place because they had
had such poor feeding places for several nights before our arrival
here, and I also wished, if possible, to meet again with the Wynbring
natives, and endeavour to find out from them whether any other waters
existed in this country. Old Jimmy, when he discovered, through Tommy
Oldham, what I wanted the natives for, seemed surprised and annoyed
that I should attempt to get information from them while he was with
me in his own territories. He said he would take me to several waters
between here and Youldeh, by a more northerly route than he had
previously shown; he said that water existed at several places which
he enumerated on his fingers; their names were Taloreh, Edoldeh,
Cudyeh, Yanderby, Mobing, Bring, Poothraba, Pondoothy, and Youldeh. I
was very glad to hear of all these places, and hoped we should find
they were situated in a more hospitable country than that through
which we had formerly come. On the 25th Mr. Young shot an emu, and we
had fried steaks, which we all relished. Saleh being a good Mussulman,
was only just (if) in time to run up and cut the bird's throat before
it died, otherwise his religious scruples would have prevented him
from eating any of it. All the meat he did eat, which was smoked beef,
had been killed in the orthodox Mohammedan style, either by himself or
one of his co-religionists at Beltana. It was cured and carried on
purpose. None of the natives I had formerly seen, or any others, made
their appearance, and the party were disappointed by not seeing the
charming young Polly, my description of whom had greatly raised their
curiosity.

(ILLUSTRATION: WYNBRING ROCK.)

On the 26th of June we departed from the pretty little oasis of
Wynbring, leaving its isolated and water-giving rock, in the silence
and solitude of its enveloping scrubs, abandoning it once again, to
the occupation of primeval man, a fertile little gem in a desolate
waste, where the footsteps of the white man had never been seen until
I came, where the wild emu, and the wilder black man, continually
return to its life-sustaining rock, where the aboriginal inhabitants
will again and again indulge in the wild revelries of the midnight
corroborree dance, and where, in an existence totally distinct from
ours of civilisation, men and women live and love, and eat and drink,
and sleep and die. But the passions are the same in all phases of the
life of the human family, the two great