34 INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 



On reaching it, however, it turned out to be a small oasis in the desert 

 of stones : a tract of sandy and clayey ground well clothed mth acacias, 

 saltbush, and grass, and with plenty of surface water lying about. 

 Black T(;mmy now changed his course more north, and said the creek 

 was over the next rise — a proceeding which led me to surmise that he 

 knew very little about the creek at all. Keeping on the new course 

 we travelled over a large earthy plain, then over a stony tract, then a 

 second patch of sandy country with grass and saltbush, then stones 

 again, till, finding that we might go on to the night for all our stupid 

 guide knew, I halted in some very good grass, with several good 

 claypans of water close at hand. We have had a high ridge of sand 

 on either hand all day, at about five miles distance from each other, and 

 almost on the same course that we have come. Taking all in all, the 

 travelling is not at all bad, and, thus far, the celebrated Great Stony 

 Desert is very little different from large tracts of the stony country 

 which I have seen in what is called in South Australia the Far North 

 and the North- West, excepting that there is comparatively little salt- 

 bush here. 



" As soon as we had camped Tommy set to work catching rats, and 

 soon had 11 singeing whole on the coals; they were then covered up 

 with ashes and baked. On taking them out he first pulled off all the 

 tails, made a bunch of the lot, and ate them like radishes ; then he 

 disposed of the bodies seriatim, eating each by biting off pieces as he 

 might have done to a sausage. 



" After sundown, ducks, swans, and native companions passed over 

 us, going northwards." 



When we started on the following morning I steered for a high, 

 white sandhill, to enable me to decide on the direction in which it 

 would be best to direct our course, but on ascending one of the stony 

 undulations which varied the scene, there opened before us an un- 

 expected view — a wide expanse of saltbush flat, covered with a thick 

 coating of native clover and other herbage of luxuriant groAvth. In 

 descending from the ridge I noticed on a steep descent the sharply 

 defi.ned line of drift marking the level of the flood waters, so marked, 

 indeed, that I halted my horse on it, with his hind feet in the desert 

 and his front on the growing plants. We were in the wide valley of 

 the Diamantina, and I may anticipate what I ascertained later on 

 by saying that the flood waters, as we crossed to the other edge, had 

 extended to a width of not less than 20 miles. 



For 17 days we traversed this flooded country, finding everywhere 

 lakes, water channels, lagoons — with wide extents of earthy plains — 



