had the Finke carried water from its source in the
Macdonnel Ranges to its mouth in the great dry salt Lake Eyre, and the
trees which mark its course, and can be seen from many, many miles away
scattered about the landscape, gain their nourishment from a
water-supply fifty or sixty feet below the arid surface.

The drover saw the cattle safely over the dry creek, put them on camp
in a clay-pen surrounded by sandhills, and then rode up to the little
group of rough buildings which, because the Finke makes an almost
complete turn on itself just there, goes by the name of Horseshoe Bend.
The Horseshoe Bend licensed store is a low iron building ornamented on
two sides by a broad veranda. Clustered at the back are a hut of split
box logs thatched with cane, an iron-roofed cellar, and a few primitive
outbuildings. These, with a large set of yards and troughs for
watering cattle, make what is not only the homestead of a
six-thousand-square-mile cattle station, but also an important depot on
the Great North Stock Route, a postal and telegraph station, and the
residence--when he is not away on the run--of a justice of the peace.
In a cramped and dusty office, where, amid the buzzing of innumerable
flies, while the temperature climbs above 110 deg. F. every day for five
months in the year, the news of Europe and Asia can be heard
tick-tacked in code by inserting a little plug. The reports of a war
in India, of an active volcano in South America, or of a cricket match
in England could be heard at Horseshoe Bend in the centre of the
Australian desert before people in Melbourne knew anything about it.
The only thing necessary is to insert a little metal plug and make the
current run through the recorder.

But the plug hangs idle on its nail; the recorder is covered with dust;
no one bothers about either Europe or Asia. What chiefly concerns the
few white men who are able to live in Central Australia are the price
of stock, the best place to find a little dried grass or bush, and
water. Always water, water, water--everything else is of secondary
importance--cattle-feed and water.

The conversation between Stobart and the man behind the bar was all
about the needs and the ways of stock. The drover hitched his horse to
a veranda-post and walked into the dark drinking-room stiffly, for he
had been in the saddle since three o'clock that morning, and had done
some hard riding after restless cattle.

"Good-day," said Stobart.