beautiful
rest.

We had not yet even sighted the Finke, upon my north-west course; but
I determined to continue, and was rewarded by coming suddenly upon it
under the foot of high sandhills. Its course now was a good deal to
the north. The horses being heavily packed, and the spinifex
distressing them so much, we found a convenient spot where the animals
could water without bogging, and camped. Hard by, were some clumps of
the fine-looking casuarinas; they grow to a height of twenty to
twenty-five feet of barrel without a branch, and then spread out to a
fine umbrella top; they flourish out of pure red sand. The large sheet
of water at the camp had wild ducks on it: some of these we shot. The
day was very agreeable, with cool breezes from the north-west. A
tributary joins the Finke here from the west, and a high dark hill
forms its southern embankment: the western horizon is bounded by
broken lines of hills, of no great elevation. As we ascend the river,
the country gradually rises, and we are here about 250 feet above the
level of the Charlotte Waters Station.

Finding the river now trended not only northerly, but even east of
north, we had to go in that direction, passing over some very high
sandhills, where we met the Finke at almost right angles. Although the
country was quite open, it was impossible to see the river channel,
even though fringed with rows of splendid gum-trees, for any distance,
as it became hidden by the high sandhills. I was very reluctant to
cross, on account of the frightfully boggy bed of the creek, but,
rather than travel several miles roundabout, I decided to try it. We
got over, certainly, but to see one's horses and loads sinking bodily
in a mass of quaking quicksand is by no means an agreeable sight, and
it was only by urging the animals on with stock-whips, to prevent them
delaying, that we accomplished the crossing without loss. Our riding
horses got the worst of it, as the bed was so fearfully ploughed up by
the pack-horses ahead of them. The whole bed of this peculiar creek
appears to be a quicksand, and when I say it was nearly a quarter of a
mile wide, its formidable nature will be understood. Here a stream of
slightly brackish water was trickling down the bed in a much narrower
channel, however, than its whole width; and where the water appears
upon the surface, there the bog is most to be apprehended. Sometimes
it runs under one bank, sometimes under the opposite, and again, at