ome of the poor creatures would have to wait hours before their
thirst was satisfied,--and even die on the outer fringe of the waiting
throng. I remember that even at the time the scene struck me as an
amazing and unprecedented one, for there was I doing my best to regulate
the traffic, so to speak, sending away the birds and animals and reptiles
whose wants had been satisfied, and bringing skins full of water to those
who had fallen down from exhaustion, and were in a fair way to die. As a
rule, the creatures took no notice whatever of me, but seemed to realise
in some instinctive way that I was their benefactor. Of course I had to
cover over the top of the well itself, otherwise it would have been
simply swamped with the carcasses of eager animals and birds.

But, it may be asked, why did I take the trouble to supply everything
that walked and flew and crawled with water when water was so precious? A
moment's thought will furnish the answer. If I suffered all the animals,
birds, and reptiles to die, I myself would be without food, and then my
last state would be considerably worse than the first.

I think the snakes were the most ungrateful creatures of all. Sometimes
they would deliberately coil themselves up in the trough itself, and so
prevent the birds from approaching. I always knew when something of this
kind had happened, because of the frightful screeching and general uproar
set up by the indignant birds--that is to say, such as had the power to
screech left. I would hurry to the spot and drag out the cause of the
trouble with a forked stick. I never killed him, because there were
already enough of his kind dead on every side. The very trees and grass
died; and in this originated another almost equally terrible peril--the
bush fires, of which more hereafter. Talking about snakes, one day I had
a narrow escape from one of these ungrateful reptiles. A number of baby
snakes had swarmed into the trough, and I was in the very act of angrily
removing them when I heard a shout of horror from Yamba. I swung round,
instinctively leaping sideways as I did so, and there, rearing itself
high in the air, was an enormous snake, fully twenty feet long. Yamba,
without a moment's hesitation, aimed a tremendous blow at it and smashed
its head.

The drought was productive of all kinds of curious and remarkable
incidents. The emus came in great flocks to the drinking-trough, and
some of them were so far gone that