him to steer by a
pocket compass.

Before they left each camp its number was cut deeply into the bark of
some prominent tree. Wills kept the little record there is of their
journey, and as they went it was the duty of King or Gray to blaze a
tree to mark their route.

They passed now over many miles of the richly grassed slopes of a
beautiful open forest, intersected by frequent watercourses where the
land trended gradually upward to the distant mountain-range. Sometimes
they had to go out of their course in order to avoid the tangle of
tropic jungle; but onward north by east they went, beneath the shade of
heavy-fruited palms, their road again made difficult by the large and
numerous anthills that give these northern latitudes so strange a
solemnity and appearance of desolation.

After leaving Cooper's Creek they often crossed the paths the blacks
made for themselves, but had hitherto seen nothing of the natives. One
day Golah, one of the camels (who were all now beginning to show great
signs of fatigue), had gone down into the bed of a creek to drink, and
could not be made to climb its steep sides again.

After several unsuccessful attempts to get him up, they determined to
try bringing him down until an easier ascent could be found. King
thereupon went on alone with him, and had great difficulty in getting
him through some of the deeper water-holes.

But after going in this way for two or three miles they were forced to
leave him behind, as it separated King from the rest of the party, and
they found that a number of blacks were hiding in the box-trees on the
banks, watching, and following them with stealthy footsteps.

It now became a very difficult matter for the camels to travel as the
heavy rains that had fallen made the land so wet and boggy that with
every footstep they sank several inches into it.

At Camp 119 Burke left them in charge of Gray and King, and walked on to
the shores of Carpentaria with Wills, and took only the horse Billy to
carry their provisions.

[Illustration: Golah is abandoned]

They followed the banks of a river which Burke named the Cloncurry. A
few hundred yards below the camp Billy got bogged in a quicksand bank so
deeply as to be unable to stir, and they had to undermine him on the
creek side and pull him into the water. About five miles farther on he
bogged again, and afterwards was so weak that he could hardly crawl.

After floundering along in this way for some time th