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hand. They went on through the flat forest of gums 

 I know the country the ground whitey-brown and 

 hard, the grass hard, too, and brown also, the gum- 

 trees lean and lanky, with hard, greyish leaves that 

 whizz in the scorching wind like plates of tin. On 

 to the limbs and stems of the trees there clung strange 

 ghosts of grasshoppers, pallid and motionless ; the cast- 

 off husks of locusts, which, vigorous now in their new 

 casing, make a maddening, metallic whirr in the upper 

 foliage. And the grass-trees ! What weird things they 

 are, with their uncouth black trunks and dreary bunches 

 of a gigantic kind of grass, out of which uprise brown 

 cones, long and slender and about the size and thick- 

 ness of a black's spear. One might fancy them a 

 scattered cohort of monstrous beings, standing with 

 weapons poised. There are dead twigs strewing the 

 earth, and fallen logs, and, in patches, a wiry under- 

 growth, peopled with curious insects if one stopped 

 to look : for instance, the brown praying mantis, its 

 arms upraised and hands folded, beseeching grace. 

 Here and there is a big ant-bed, with little trails ex- 

 tending on every side as the streets of tombs went 

 out of ancient Rome for in an ant-bed in the bush 

 one may find a likeness to the great old cities and the 

 dead empires of the world ! The ants made their raids 

 in search of food and thirst of conquest. The Romans 

 did the same. 



The men, ' humping bluey,' had no ideas of that 

 kind ; they only thought of finding water. But there 

 was not a sign of even a dry gully or hidden spring. 

 All was parched and arid, a brassy sun overhead. 



The men were sure there must be a water-hole 

 somewhere near, and proposed that they should explore 



