Interior of New Holland. 
349 
pushing on for the stockade; but on arriving at it, the sheet of 
water on which I had placed my dependance was gone, and a little 
mud only remained. The morning, even at sunrise, had been 
fearfully hot, so that the horses required water, and we dug a 
trench for them to drink it as it filled. About ten, a most wither¬ 
ing blast, before which the leaves fell in showers from the trees, 
and the vegetable kingdom seemed to shrink, came upon us. I 
cannot describe the awful heat that prevailed as the wind rose 
almost to a hurricane. We crept behind the trees, while the 
horses turned their backs to it, and were unable to hold up their 
heads. It was impossible to stir. It was here that my thermo¬ 
meter, graduated to 127, burst in the shade, from the expansion 
of the mercury in the bulb—a fact no other traveller, I believe, 
has ever had to record. But I was astonished that we existed in 
such a temperature as that to which we were at this time exposed 
—in the direct rays of the sun certainly not less than 150 degrees 
daily. As the sun set on the evening of this fearful day we had 
thunder and rain, but we could have counted the drops, so few 
and so widely apart did they fall. We left the creek at dawn on 
the morning of the 13th, being eighty-six miles distant from the 
camp. We gave the horses rest at sunset for two hours, and 
then pushed on. I had secured a gallon of water for the first 
horse that might fall, and had again lightened all their loads. 
At midnight we had got on tolerably, when Bally, a favorite horse 
I had got from Mr. Waterhouse, fell. We gave him the water, 
and threw away his pack. Thus relieved, he crawled on a few 
miles farther, when he again dropped. It then struck me to ride 
on with Mr. Stuart to the camp, and to send a dray out with 
water. Accordingly, telling the men to come on slowly, I left 
them, and rode on, for the fourth time, along our old tracks. At 
sunset we descended into the plain, and looked to the little hill on 
which the tents had stood, but it was unoccupied. The stockade 
was silent and deserted, and only the signs of the past now re¬ 
mained. Mr. Browne, as his letters informed me, had been 
reluctantly forced to retreat, and had taken his way to the old 
dep6t, distant seventy-two miles. The cause of Mr. Browne’s 
having been thus obliged to retire was the putrid turn the water 
