sufficient safeguard against the assaults of the barbarous tribes of the interior; for the same calamity which prevented the one party from getting away equally prohibited the other from approaching this oasis in the desert. During the six months' detention only one blackfellow had been able to put in an appearance, and not till reduced to the last extremity of hunger and thirst. The poor emaciated creature was prevailed upon to remain for the present; but, having free access to the explorers' mutton, he grew tolerably fat in the course of a fortnight, when, with the usual gratitude of the barbarian, he turned his back upon his benefactors and took the way that pleased him best. The accounts of the interior which Sturt received from this and other aborigines he had previously encountered were disheartening in the extreme, and it was impossible to abstain from gloomy forebodings during this period of enforced incarceration. But whether they were to have any more travelling or not was becoming more and more a matter of bare probability. The herbage of the valley had become reduced to mere dust, and the water had diminished so ominously as to make it apparent that, unless rain fell within a month, the party would certainly find their graves in the Rocky Glen, as one of them had already done. But the future had better things in store, and did not longer withhold them. In one of those sudden changes so characteristic of the Australian climate the sky assumed its curtain of clouds and burst in a storm of rain, which deluged the valley. The roar of the rushing water, Sturt avers, was the sweetest music that ever fell upon his ear. That welcome thunderstorm was the key which opened the door of the prison and gave liberty to the captives.