, I did not go
that way. The day was very warm, thermometer 99 degrees in shade.

(ILLUSTRATION: THE FIRST WHITE MAN MET IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA.)

This mount is called Geelabing on the chart, but Charlie did not know
it by that name. He and the other two came on and camped with us that
night. Our course was nearly south-west; we only travelled eleven
miles. The following day our three friends departed, as they said, to
visit Nyngham, while we pursued our own course, and reached the shores
of the dry salt-lake Moore. In about thirty miles we found some rock
water-holes, and encamped on the edge of the lake, where we saw old
horse and cattle tracks. We next crossed the lake-bed, which was seven
miles wide. No doubt there is brine in some parts of it, but where I
crossed it was firm and dry. We left it on the 30th of October, and
travelling upon a course nearly west-south-west, we struck some old
dray tracks, at a dried-up spring, on the 3rd of November, which I did
not follow, as they ran eastwards. From there I turned south, and
early on the 4th we came upon an outlying sheep station; its buildings
consisting simply of a few bark-gunyahs. There was not even a single,
rude hut in the dingle; blacks' and whites' gunyahs being all alike.
Had I not seen some clothes, cooking utensils, etc., at one of them, I
should have thought that only black shepherds lived there. A shallow
well, and whip for raising the water into a trough, was enclosed by a
fence, and we watered our camels there. The sheep and shepherd were
away, and although we were desperately hungry for meat, not having had
any for a month, we prepared to wait until the shepherd should come
home in the evening. While we were thinking over these matters, a
white man came riding up. He apparently did not see us, nor did his
horse either, until they were quite close; then his horse suddenly
stopped and snorted, and he shouted out, "Holy sailor, what's that?"
He was so extraordinarily surprised at the appearance of the caravan
that he turned to gallop away. However, I walked to, and reassured
him, and told him who I was and where I had come from. Of course he
was an Irishman, and he said, "Is it South Austhralia yez come from?
Shure I came from there meself. Did yez crass any say? I don't know,
sure I came by Albany; I never came the way you've come at all. Shure,
I wilcome yez, in the name of the whole colony. I saw something about
yez in the paper not long ago. Can I do