d to turn back. . . Country very bad, dense
spinifex, high, steep sand-ridges with timber in flats. Any man
attempting to cross this country with horses must perish. . . A strong
easterly wind prevailed, blowing up clouds of sand and ashes from
the burnt ground. Truly this is a desert!"

This was written when I was two and a half years old. The writer little
thought that an infant was growing up who would have no more sense than
to revisit this ghastly region; nor as far as I remember was the infant
thinking much about sand! Dear me! how easy it was to get a drink in
those days--merely by yelling for it--but the strongest lungs in the world
cannot dig out a native well.

CHAPTER V

STANSMORE RANGE TO LAKE MACDONALD

Shaping our course from the lake (Lake White) towards the highest point
in the range, which I named Stansmore Range after poor Charlie, we had
the novel and pleasant experience of travelling with, instead of across,
the ridges--if only we could have turned the country round at right
angles, or changed the North point of the compass, how nice it would have
been! As it was, South we must go to get home, and take the ridges as
they came; our Westerly course was only temporary. For twenty-seven
miles we steered W.b.S., keeping along the trough of two ridges the
whole time, seeing nothing on either hand but a high bank of sand covered
with the usual vegetation. The trough was flat at the bottom, and about
150 yards wide. For ten miles we travelled between the same two parallel
ridges, then in front the butt-end of another appeared, as the trough
widened out. Deviating slightly to the South from our former course, we
were again between two ridges, one of which was the same that we had
followed along before. Then, again, in a few miles another ridge would
start, and altering our course again, this time a little to the North,
continued our march between two fresh ridges, and so on. Thus it will be
seen that the ridges, though apparently parallel, are not accurately so,
and that one may be continuous for more than ten miles or so, when it
ends and another takes its place.

On our march our captives cleverly caught a spinifex rat and a snake (one
of the very few that we saw); they greedily devoured both, and were much
pleased when Godfrey refused to partake of a piece of half-raw snake which
they politely offered him. We discovered that they had a great liking for
our beef-water--that is, the water in