DESOLATION OF THE COUNTRY. 73 
disappeared as we proceeded on our day’s journey, and 
we at length found ourselves once more among brushes, 
and on the edge of plains, over which the rhagodia pre- 
vailed. Nothing could exceed in dreariness the appearance 
of the tracks through which we journeyed, on this and the 
two following days. The creek on which we depended for 
a supply of water, gave such alarming indications of a 
total failure, that I at one time, had serious thoughts of 
abandoning my pursuit of it. We passed hollow after 
hollow that had successively dried up, although originally 
of considerable depth ; and, when we at length found 
water, it was doubtful how far we could make use of it. 
Sometimes in boiling it left a sediment nearly equal to 
half its body ; at other times it was so bitter as to be 
quite unpalatable. That on which we subsisted was 
scraped up from small puddles, heated by the sun’s rays; 
and so uncertain were we of finding water at the end of 
the day’s journey, that we were obliged to carry a supply 
on one of the bullocks. There was scarcely a living crea- 
ture, even of the feathered race, to be seen to break the 
stillness of the forest. The native dogs alone wandered 
about, though they had scarcely strength to avoid us; 
and their melancholy howl, breaking in upon the ear at the 
dead of the night, only served to impress more fully on 
the mind the absolute loneliness of the desert. 
It appeared, from their traces that the natives had 
lingered on this ground, on which they had perhaps been 
born, as long as it continued to afford them a scanty 
