In excellent spirits we jogged along to the Canning, and then eleven miles farther, to a muddy pool called Boregarup, where we baited the horses, and lunched on one of his Excellency's cold meat-pies. The water in the pool was not very tempting, but we ladled a little out in our pannikins, and mixing it with brandy, managed to drink it. The want of water makes travelling in the bush during summer a serious business. Frequently you find a well, on which your thoughts and hopes have been fixed for the last twenty miles, completely dried up; and you have to endure thirst as well as you can for some hours longer. Sometimes by scraping the bottom of the well, and digging down with your pannikin, you come to a little moisture, and after waiting an hour, succeed in obtaining about half-a-pint of yellow fluid, compounded of mud and water. This you strain through as many pocket-handkerchiefs as you can command, and are at last enabled to moisten your baked lips. On these occasions the traveller cares less about himself than his horse, and often have we served the latter out of our pannikin from holes into which he could not get his nose, whilst denying ourselves more than a little sip. After lying an hour on our blankets in the hot shade, smoking a cigar, and waging incessant war with myriads of mosquitoes and sand-flies, we decided that it was impossible to continue any longer so unequal a conflict; and saddling our horses in haste, we beat a quick retreat, and felt much cooler and more comfortable whilst in motion. In the course of the afternoon we passed through a vast dry swamp many miles long. The reeds on each side of the track frequently reached to our heads, and prevented our seeing any thing else on either side of us; and when we did get a glimpse over the rushes level with our eyes, we could behold nothing but an immense plain of waving green, like a huge field of unripe wheat, edged in the distance by the stern outline of the ever-sombre forest of eucalyptus trees. This swamp is a terrible place to pass through in winter. It is nevertheless one of the royal post-roads of the colony; and the bearer of her Majesty's mail from Pinjarra to Perth, is frequently obliged to swim for his life, with the letter-bag towing astern, like a jolly-boat behind a Newcastle collier.