Our course next, after crossing the dividing range, lay over a very flat country, all burned up as far as the eye could reach,—a perfect desert of sand. The chain of pools which formed the river after rain, were nearly choked up by the putrifying carcases of cattle, smothered in fighting for water. The air was poisonous; the horses sank fetlock-deep at every stride; the blazing sun was reflected back from the hot sand with an intensity that almost blinded our half-shut eyes. After three hours of this misery, we struck into a better country, and soon after came up to the camp of a squatter, who had been forced forward by the drought. He had marked out about twenty miles along the river for his run,—a pretty good slice, I thought, when, before turning back, he said, “That is all I want.” It was no business of ours, as we had views further a-field. For three days we pushed on, making from thirty to forty miles a day, without seeing anything exactly to our mind. We rode over arid plains, dotted with scrubby brushwood, then up precipitous hills; now leaping, now clambering down and up, and now riding round to avoid dry gullies and ravines; passing occasionally breaks of green pasture, but insufficiently watered for my purpose. Sometimes our way lay along mountain sides, sometimes in the dry bed of a torrent. Sometimes huge boulders interrupted our course, sometimes the gigantic trunks of fallen trees. More than once we had to steer through a forest of the monotonous, shadeless gum, with its lofty, dazzlingly white trunks festooned with the brown, curly bark of the previous year, and its parasol-like but shadeless branches, where crimson, green, and snowy parrot tribes shrieked and whistled among the evergreen leaves. It is impossible to conceive anything more gorgeous than these birds as they fluttered in the sun; but I confess that, “on serious thoughts intent,” during this journey, they were more often associated with my ideas of supper than anything else. The evening of the third day, we found ourselves obliged to camp down with a scanty supply of brackish water, and no signs of any living thing. The next day was worse; a land of silence and desolation, where it seemed as if mountains had been crumbled up and scattered about in hills and lumps. The dry earth cracked and yawned in all directions. Failing to find water, we camped down, parched, weary, silent, but not despairing. The next morning the horses were gone. I cannot find words to describe what we suffered in the subsequent twelve hours. I had walked until my feet were one mass of blisters, and was ready to lie down and die ten times in the day; but somehow I found strength to walk, always chewing a bullet. At length, at nightfall, we found our horses; and, nearly at the same time, to crown our delight—water. At the sight of this, we both involuntarily sank down on our knees to return thanks for life saved.