266 
GEOLOGICAL CHARACTER 
friends, who were far away ; awakening, for a time 
at least, a train of happier thoughts and kindlier 
feelings than we had for a long time experienced. 
On the 26th, I found that our horses and sheep 
were falling off so much in condition, from the 
scarcity of grass, and its dry and sapless quality, 
that it became absolutely necessary for us to remove 
elsewhere ; I had already had all our surplus stores 
and baggage headed up in casks, or packed in cases, 
and carefully buried (previously covered over with a 
tarpaulin and with bushes to keep them from damp), 
near the sand-hills, and to-day I moved on the party 
for five miles to the well in the plains ; the grass 
here was very abundant, but still dry, and without 
much nourishment ; the water was plentiful, but 
brackish and awkward to get at, being through a 
hole in a solid sheet of limestone, similar to that 
behind Point Brown. Upon cleaning it out and 
deepening it a little, it tasted even worse than before, 
but still we were thankful for it. 
The geological character of the country was 
exactly similar to that we had been in so long, 
entirely of fossil formation, with a calcareous oolitic 
limestone forming the upper crusts, and though 
this was occasionally concealed by sand on the 
surface, we always were stopped by it in digging ; 
it was seemingly a very recent deposit, full of marine 
shells, in every stage of petrifaction. Granite we 
had not seen for some time, though I have no doubt 
that it occasionally protrudes ; a small piece, found 
