ered, they had done
a remarkable stage. A stage of eleven days (from the evening of May 31st
to the evening of June 11th)--a distance of 160 miles on the map, and a
good many more allowing for deviations, during which they had but little
water. We had brought them through safely, but at the cost of how much
trouble to ourselves may be judged from previous pages and the following
figures. We left the Deep rock-holes with exactly 102 gallons of water;
decrease by breaking through the scrub must have been considerable, as we
had nearly thirty gallons of this amount in canvas bags.

Added to this must be the 30 gallons we got from the small rock-hole--that
is, 132 gallons in all. Of this supply the horses had 6 gallons each the
first night, 3 gallons each subsequently until the day The Monk died and
their ration was stopped. From 132, we take 90 (the horses' share).
This leaves 42 gallons for four men and a dog (which drinks as much as
a man) for eleven days; this supply was used for washing (an item hardly
appreciable), bread-making, drinking, and beef-boiling, the last the most
ruinous item; for dry-salted beef is very salt indeed, and unless boiled
thoroughly (it should be boiled in two waters) makes one fearfully
thirsty. What would otherwise have been an easy task was made difficult
and uncomfortable by the presence of the horses, but we were well
rewarded by the satisfaction of seeing them alive at the finish.

CHAPTER VIII

WOODHOUSE LAGOON REVISITED

June 12th, 13th, 14th, we rested at the welcome creek and had time to
examine our surroundings. I made the position of our camp to be in lat.
26 degrees 0 minutes, long. 125 degrees 22 minutes, and marked a gum tree
near it with C7. Therefore I concluded that this was the Blythe Creek, of
Forrest; everything pointed to my conclusion being correct, excepting the
failure to find Forrest's marked tree, and to locate his Sutherland
Range. However, the bark might have grown over the marking on the
tree--and several trees showed places where bark had been cut out by the
natives for coolimans, and subsequently closed again--or the tree might
have been burned, or blown down. As to the second, I am convinced that
Forrest mistook the butt-ends of the sand-ridges cut off by Lake Breaden
for a range of hills, for he only saw them from a distance. The creek
heads in a broken sandstone range of tabletops and cliffs; from its head
I sighted a peculiar peak, about nine m