and other spoils, such as opossum rugs, spears, shields, coolamins--vessels of wood or bark, like small canoes, for carrying water--and they usually killed several of the men of the conquered race. After remaining at this Paring for about an hour, we remounted our horses and returned to the camp at Youldeh. The party remained there for a few days, hoping for a change in the weather, as the heat was now very great and the country in the neighbourhood of the most forbidding and formidable nature to penetrate. It consisted of very high and scrubby red sandhills, and it was altogether so unpleasing a locality that I abandoned the idea of pushing to the north, to discover whether any other waters could be found in that direction, for the present, and postponed the attempt until I should return to this depot en route for Perth, with the whole of my new expedition--deciding to make my way now to the eastwards in order to reach Beltana by a route previously untravelled. Upon the morning after my return from Paring, all the horses were away--indeed, as I have said before, there was nothing for them to eat at this place, and they always rambled as far as they could possibly go from the camp to get away from the camels, although those more sensible animals were, so to say, in clover. We had three young black fellows and old Jimmy, and it was the young ones' duty to look after and get the horses, while old Jimmy had the easier employment of taking care of the camels. This morning, two of the young blacks were sent out very early for the horses, whilst the other and old Jimmy remained to do anything that might be required at the camp. The morning was hot and oppressive, we sat as comfortably as we could in the shade of our awning; by twelve o'clock no signs of black boys or horses had made their appearance. At one o'clock we had dinner, and gave old Jimmy and his mate theirs. I noticed that the younger black left the camp with a bit of a bundle under his shirt and a canvas water-bag; I and some of the others watched whither he went, and to our surprise we found that he was taking food and water to the other two boys, who should have been away after the horses, but were quietly encamped under a big bush within a quarter of a mile of us and had never been after the horses at all. Of course we were very indignant, and were going to punish them with a good thrashing, when one of them informed us that it was no use our hammering them, for they could not go for the horses because they were too much afraid of the Cockata blacks, and unless we sent old Jimmy or a white man they would not go out of sight of the camp. This showed the state of superstition and fear in which these people live. Indeed, I believe if the whole Fowler's Bay tribes were all encamped together in one mob round their own fires, in their own country, and any one ran into the camp and shouted "Cockata," it would cause a stampede among them immediately.