learned it, it is but the sweeter from the pain and toil which
are undergone in the acquisition."

The mention of these trials to which travellers in the bush are
peculiarly liable, brings naturally to mind that worst of all
privations, a want of water, to which they are so frequently exposed.
The effects of extreme thirst are stated to have been shown, not merely
in weakness and want, in a parched and burning mouth, but likewise in a
partial loss of the senses of seeing and hearing. Indeed, the powers of
the whole frame are affected, and, upon moving, after a short interval
of rest, the blood rushes up into the head with a fearful and painful
violence. A party of men reduced to this condition have very little
strength, either of mind or body, left them, and it is stated, that, in
cases of extreme privation, the worst characters have always least
control over their appetites.[7] Imagine men marching through a barren
and sandy country, a thirsty land where no water is, at the rate of
about two miles in an hour and a quarter, when, suddenly, they come upon
the edge of a dried-up swamp, and behold the footmark of a native,
imprinted on the sand,--the first beginning of hope, a sign of animal
life, which of course implies the means of supporting it. Many more
footsteps are soon seen, and some wells of the natives are next
discovered, but alas! all appear dry. Kaiber, a native companion of the
party, suddenly starts up from a bed of reeds, where he has been burying
his head in a hole of _soft mud_, with which he had completely swelled
himself out, and of which he had helped himself to pretty well half the
supply. It is so thick that it needs straining through a handkerchief,
yet so welcome, after three days and two nights of burning thirst,
under a fierce sun, that each man throws himself down beside the hole,
exclaiming "Thank God!" and then greedily swallows a few mouthfulls of
the liquid mud, declaring it to be the most delicious water, with a
peculiar flavour, better than any that had ever before been tasted by
him. Upon scraping the mud quite out of the hole, water begins slowly to
trickle in again.[8] As might be expected, game abounds here, driven by
the general dryness of the country to these springs. But the trembling
hand of a man worn down by fatigue and thirst is not equal to wield a
gun, or direct its fire to any purpose; so it seems as if thirst were
escaped for a time, in order that hunger might occupy its pla