With his gun upon his shoulder, then, his powder-horn, his shot-belt, and a large wallet of skin, containing his provision of biscuit, by his side, he set out early in the morning, directing his course according to the information he had received from the bushranger. The air was fresh and cool, and here and there a faint star might still be seen in the sky, "paling its ineffectual fires" at the approach of the sun. For three hours he walked on lightly and with ease; but then the heat began to have effect, and before another hour was over the sun beat fiercely on his head, so that he was glad to sit down beneath the shade of a tall, solitary tree, where the wind from the ocean, the roar of which he heard not far off, could come to refresh him. He felt how terrible it must be to cross, in the summer season, any of those wide, arid deserts which form a considerable portion of New Holland, and one of which he knew lay close to the east of the fertile tract in which he had fixed his dwelling. There, for seventy or eighty miles, extend limestone hills without grass, or tree, or water; not a herb, not a shrub, not a living thing, if it be not the lizard or the scorpion, is to be seen throughout the whole tract; and as he looked to the south-east, and saw a yellow, reddish streak extending across the distance, and resting with a hard edge upon the sky at the horizon, he thought, "I must take care not to involve myself in such a wilderness as that. To die of thirst must be a fearful death;" and instinctively he rose, and walked on towards a spot in the plain where the grass seemed somewhat greener, and the trees in more luxuriant foliage than the rest. He found, as he expected, a little stream, somewhat shrunk, indeed, by the late heats, but still containing plenty of clear and beautiful water; and wading through some reeds upon the bank under a fringe of large trees, he was going to fill a gourd which he had dried, when suddenly a number of birds, of the duck species, rose up close to him, and putting his gun to his shoulder, he fired, and brought down two with one shot. They were beautiful birds, of a jetty black colour, and seemed fat and well-conditioned; and he laid them down on the bank, and then went in again to fill his gourd. When he came back he found a large snake, with its head raised, and its tongue darting in and out, hissing at the dead birds, as if hardly comprehending how they lay so still. The reptile did not seem to hear his approach, and he killed it easily with the stock of his gun, saying somewhat bitterly, "Slaughter, slaughter! It is all warfare, this life; defensive against the strong, offensive against the weak. It is a strange state of being!"