distance, remained quiet for a while until satisfied of its safety, and then leisurely walked to the water. After deep and frequent draughts, it retired, winging its way towards its secluded nest. Just before reaching the lake, the Colonel’s party made a capture, a young native woman; and they detained her in order that she might guide them to the native wells. On the 1st of September, however, she effected her escape by gnawing through a thick hair-rope, with which she had been fastened to a tree. Spinifex and sand resumed their predominance as the travellers left the lake behind them. The heat was very great, and crossing the hot sand and the steep hills was trying work. On the 12th, they rejoiced in the discovery of some excellent wells. Then again came spinifex and sand-hills. These troublesome ridges varied considerably in height and in distance from one another; but their elevation seldom exceeded eighty feet, and the space between them was not often more than three hundred yards. They lay parallel to one another, running from east to west; so that while going either eastward or westward the travellers could keep in the intervening hollows, and travel with comparative facility, but when compelled to cross them at a great angle, the feet of the camels ploughed deep in the sand, and the strain upon the poor animals was terrible. Yet the Australian waste is, after all, less wearisome than the sandy deserts of Nubia or the great Sahara; it is sadly deficient in water, but the sand-hills disguise their inhospitality with many varieties of shrubs and flowers, as well as with acacias and gum trees. The shrubs are not edible, and the trees are of no value as timber, but they serve to hide the nakedness of the land.