ins? A share in the bare sale of
the mine if lucky; if not, God help us! for nothing but curses and
complaints will be our portion. The natural rejoinder to this is, "Why,
then, do you go?" To which I can only answer that one must make a living
somehow, and that some like to make money hard, and some to make it
easily. Perhaps I belong to the former class.

Whatever the reason, the fact remains that in the heat of the summer we
were ploughing our way through salt-bogs, without water or any immediate
prospect of getting any, and realised, not for the first time, that the
prospector's life in West Australia is not "all beer and skittles."

The lake negotiated, we decided to rest under the scanty shade of a mulga
tree, and regaled ourselves on oatmeal washed down with a mouthful of
water, the last, hot from the iron casks. At a time when water is
plentiful it can be carried and kept cool in canvas bags; but it owes
this coolness to evaporation, and consequent waste of water. During the
hot weather, when water is scarce, I never allowed canvas bags to be used,
and so saved water, not only by avoiding evaporation, but from the fact
that water carried in galvanised-iron casks becomes so hot and unpalatable
that one is not tempted to take a big draught, and thus the supply is eked
out.

That night we camped in the thick mulga, and from one of the larger trees
I could see the hills, dead on our course, and not more than two miles
off. But we were too tired to go further that night, and in any case could
have done but little good in the dark. The poor camels were too dry to
eat the mulga we cut for them, too dry even to chew the cud; and lay
silent, tied down beside us--the stillness of the night being unbroken by
the rhythmical "crunch" of their jaws.

Before sunrise we were packed and away, and shortly reached the hills
which we found to be, as we had hoped, bare granite rocks. Leaving the
camels, we spread out, and searched every hole and corner without success.
Every rock-hole was dry. One native soak we found, from which we scraped
about half gallon of water none too clear, and the less tempting from the
close proximity of the dead body of a gin, a young native woman,
fortunately not long dead. The ashes of a native camp but lately deserted,
could be seen close by; no doubt they had moved off as the supply of water
was so nearly done. Whether they had left the body to become a skeleton,
before making a bundle of the bone