There was so little water at the camp tank, we had to send the horses
up the creek three miles to water, and on their return I was not sorry
to be moving again, for our stay at these two last camps had been
compulsory, and the anxiety, trouble, and annoyance we had, left no
very agreeable reminiscences of the locality in our minds.

We travelled along the creek all day, cutting off the bends, but
without seeing any signs of water: towards evening we set to work to
try if we could get any by digging. In about four feet, water began to
drain in, but, the sand being so loose, we had to remove an enormous
quantity to enable a horse to drink. Some of the horses would not go
into it, and had to be watered with a canvas bucket. The supply seemed
good, but it only drained in from the sides. Every time a horse drank
we had to clear out the sand for the next; it therefore took until
late before all were satisfied. The country was still open, and
timbered with fine black oak, or what is so called in Australia. It is
a species of casuarina, of the same family but distinct from the
beautiful desert oak. Triodia reigned supreme within half a mile. At
this camp the old grass had been burnt, and fresh young green shoots
appeared in its place; this was very good for the horses. A few drops
of rain fell; distant rumblings of thunder and flashes of lightning
now cooled the air. While we were at breakfast the next morning, a
thunderstorm came up to us from the west, then suddenly turned away,
only just sprinkling us, though we could see the rain falling heavily
a few yards to the south. We packed up and went off, hoping to find a
better watered region at the hills westwards. There was an
extraordinary mount a little to the west of north from us; it looked
something like a church; it was over twenty miles away: I called it
Mount Peculiar. Leaving the creek on our left, to run itself out into
some lonely flat or dismal swamp, known only to the wretched
inhabitants of this desolate region--over which there seems to brood
an unutterable stillness and a dread repose--we struck into sandhill
country, rather open, covered with the triodia or spinifex, and
timbered with the casuarina or black oak trees. We had scarcely gone
two miles when our old thunderstorm came upon us--it had evidently
missed us at first, and had now come to look for us--and it rained
heavily. The country was so sandy and porous that no water remained on
the surface. We travel