Since leaving the open country, even the tireless kites had deserted them; all around was silent, still, and lifeless. It was useless to stop to rest, the ground was blistering to the touch, and there was no shade anywhere. Then came night, but no change; throughout the long watches, the radiance of the stars was never blurred by clouds. Some of the men slept and dreamt of streams of clear, cold water, awaking only to greet the dawn of another day of blinding, stifling heat, heralded by the faint sultry sigh of the hot wind. And as the day grew hotter and hotter some lost their reason, and all lost hope. Then came the end; they separated and straggled away in ones and twos and fell and died. Day after day the terrible and pitiless sun .looked down at them lying there, and watched them dry and shrivel into mummies, and still no rain fell on the earth. By day the sky was clear and bright, and by night the stars unclouded. Years may have passed; higher and higher grew the spinifex, and its long resinous needles entangled themselves in each other, unchecked by fire for no black hunters came there in that season of drought, and the men's bodies lay there, growing more and more unlike humanity, scorched by the seven times heated earth beneath, and the glaring sun above untouched, save by the ants, those scavengers of the desert, or the tiny bright-eyed lizards. At last, the thunder clouds began to gather afar off, and when they broke, a few wandering natives ventured into the woods, living for a day or two on the uncertain rainfall. This failing, they retired again, leaving perhaps, a trail of fire behind them. Then this fire, fed by the huge banks of flammable spinifex, the growth of many years, spread into a mighty conflagration, the black smoke covering half the heavens. The hawks and the crows fled before it, swooping down on the vermin that were forced to leave the shelter of log and bush. The great silence that had reigned for so long was broken by the roar, and crash, and crackle of a sea of flames; and beneath this fiery blast every vestige of the lost explorers vanished for ever. When, on the blackened ground, fell heavy rain once more, the spinifex sprang up, fresh and green to look at, only in spots here and there, where a human body had fertilised the soil, it was greener than elsewhere. So Leichhardt drops out of Australian history, and with every succeeding year the chances of finding any trace grow more remote. Expeditions have been started in search of him, but without result, and the tale of their efforts will be told in their proper order.