ninteresting
occupation I cannot well picture. Camped alone on a spit of sand,
surrounded by a flat expanse of mud, broiled by the sun, half blinded by
the glare of the salt, with no shade but a blanket thrown over a rough
screen of branches, and nothing to do but to stoke up the fires, change
the water in the cooling-trough, and blow off the salt from the bottom of
the boilers, he was hardly to be envied. Yet Jim cheerfully undertook the
job and greeted us on our return, after four days, with the smiling remark
that his work had been varied by the necessity of plugging up the bottom
of one of the boilers which had burned through, with a compound (a patent
of his own) formed from strips of his shirt soaked in a stiff paste of
flour. That night we were astonished by the passage of a flight of ducks
over our heads, which Egan saw, and I and Conley heard distinctly.

A detailed account of our wanderings would be as wearying to the reader as
they were to ourselves, a mere monotonous repetition of cooking water and
hunting for "colours" which we never found. Christmas Eve, 1894, saw us in
the vicinity of Mount Monger, where a few men were working on an alluvial
patch and getting a little gold. A lucky storm had filled a deep clay-hole
on the flat running north-west from the hills, and here we were at last
enabled to give the camels a cheap drink; for over six weeks we had not
seen a drop of fresh water beyond what, with infinite labour, we had
condensed, with the one exception of the small rock-hole I found at
Cowarna. My entry in my journal for Christmas Day is short and sweet:
"Xmas Day, 1894. Wash clothes. Write diary. Plot course." We had no
Christmas fare to make our hearts glad and but for the fortunate arrival
of my old friend David Wilson, who gave us a couple of packets of
cornflour, would have had a scanty feast indeed.

Even in the remote little mining camp Santa Claus did not forget us, and
spread his presents, in the form of a deluge of rain, on all alike. What a
pleasant change to get thoroughly wet through! The storm hardly lasted
twenty minutes, but such was its violence that every little creek and
watercourse was soon running, and water for weeks to come was secured and
plentiful in all directions; but so local is a summer storm that five
miles from the camp, no water or signs of rain were to be seen. Our
provisions being finished, nothing remained but to make all speed for
Coolgardie, some fifty miles dista