at his fullest speed, with his head towards some overhanging branches,
under which he might have passed with impunity, but they must have
crushed Warri EN ROUTE.

Luckily I was just in time to get Highlander between the tree and the
camel, and so saved a nasty accident. Besides these small troubles,
Breaden and Godfrey were suffering agonies from "sandy blight," a sort of
ophthalmia, which is made almost unbearable by the clouds of flies, the
heat, the glare, and the dust. Breaden luckily was able to rest in a dark
room at Flora Valley and recovered, or at least sufficiently so to be
able to travel; Godfrey was very bad indeed, quite blind and helpless. At
night we pitched his mosquito-net for him--for these insects are simply
ravenous, and would eat one alive or send one mad in this part of the
country--and made him as comfortable as possible; in the morning, until I
had bathed his eyes with warm water he was blinded by the matter running
from them: then during the day he sat blindfolded on The Monk, one of the
horses--a most unpleasant condition for travelling.

Fortunately it was not for long, for soon we cut the Sturt Creek, and,
following it, reached the Denison Downs Homestead--the last settlement to
the southward, and I should say the most out-of-the-way habitation in
Australia of to-day. The nearest neighbours are nearly one hundred miles
by road, at Flora Valley; in every other direction there is a blank,
hundreds of miles in extent. A solitary enough spot in all conscience!
Yet for the last ten years two men have lived here, taking their chances
of sickness, drought, floods, and natives; raising cattle in peace and
contentment. Terribly rough, uncouth chaps, of course? Not a bit of
it!--two men, gentlemen by birth and education, one the brother of a
bishop, the other a man who started life as an artist in Paris. A rough
life does not necessarily make a rough man, and here we have the proof,
for Messrs. Stretch and Weekes are as fine a pair of gentlemen as need
be. How they came to migrate to such a spot is soon told; they brought
cattle over during the rush, hoping to make a large fortune; however, the
rush "petered out," half their cattle died, and with the remainder they
formed their station, and have remained there ever since, year by year
increasing their herd, now numbering some four thousand head, and looking
forward to the time when they hope to be well repaid for their labours. A
large, single-roomed