On reaching the camp, we were told that two nice showers had fallen, the stream now showing no signs of languishing all the day long. With his usual intelligence, Jimmy Andrews had pulled a double-barrelled gun out from under a heap of packbags and other things by the barrel; of course, the hammer got caught and snapped down on the cartridge, firing the contents, but most fortunately missing his body by half an inch. Had it been otherwise, we should have found him buried, and Gibson a lunatic and alone. No natives had appeared while we were away; as I remembered what the old gentleman told me about keeping away, so I hoped he would do the same, on account of my parting remarks to him, which it seems he must have understood. In the middle of the night my little dog Cocky rushed furiously out of the tent, and began to bark at, and chase some animal round the camp; he eventually drove it right into the tent. In the obscured moonlight I supposed it was a native dog, but it was white, and looked exactly like a large fat lamb. It was, at all events, an innocent lamb to come near us, for as it sauntered away, I sent a revolver bullet after it, and it departed at much greater speed, squealing and howling until out of earshot. On the 7th Mr. Tietkens and I again departed for the north. That night we got wet through; there was plenty of water, but none that would remain. Being sure that the native clay-hole would now be full, we passed it on our left, and at our outmost tank at nineteen miles were delighted to find that both it and the clay-pan near it were full. We called this the Emu Tank. We now went to the bare red hill with pines, previously mentioned, and found a trickling flow of water in a small gully. I hope it will trickle till I return. We are now fifty miles from Fort Mueller, and the distant ranges seemed even farther away than that. Moving north, we went over a mass of open-rolling sandhills with triodia, and that other abominable plant I call the sage-bush. In appearance it is something like low tea-tree, but it differs entirely from that family, inasmuch as it utterly abhors water. Although it is not spiny like the triodia, it is almost as annoying, both to horse and man, as it grows too high for either to step over without stretching, and it is too strong to be easily moved aside; hence, horse-tracks in this region go zigzag. At thirty-five miles the open sandhills ceased, and scrubs came on. It was a cool and cloudy day. We passed through a few groves of the pretty desert oak-trees, which I have not seen for some time; a few native poplars and currajongs were also seen to-day. The horses wandered a long way back in the night.