Next morning I was a little better, but Gibson was very ill—­indeed I thought he was going to die, and would he had died quietly there.  Mr. Tietkens and I walked up the creek to look for the horses.  We found and took about half of them to the surface water up in the narrow glen.  When we arrived, there was plenty of water running merrily along the creek channel, and there were several nice ponds full, but when we brought the second lot to the place an hour and a half afterwards, the stream had ceased to flow, and the nice ponds just mentioned were all but empty and dry.  This completely staggered me to find the drainage cease so suddenly.  The day was very hot, 110 degrees, when we returned to camp.

I was in a state of bewilderment at the thought of the water having so quickly disappeared, and I was wondering where I should have to retreat to next, as it appeared that in a day or two there would literally be no water at all.  I felt ill again from my morning’s walk, and lay down in the 110 degrees of shade, afforded by the bough gunyah which Gibson had formerly made.

I had scarcely settled myself on my rug when a most pronounced shock of earthquake occurred, the volcanic wave, which caused a sound like thunder, passing along from west to east right under us, shook the ground and the gunyah so violently as to make me jump up as though nothing was the matter with me.  As the wave passed on, we heard up in the glen to the east of us great concussions, and the sounds of smashing and falling rocks hurled from their native eminences rumbling and crashing into the glen below.  The atmosphere was very still to-day, and the sky clear except to the deceitful west.

Gibson is still so ill that we did not move the camp.  I was in a great state of anxiety about the water supply, and Tietkens and I walked first after the horses, and then took them up to the glen, where I was enchanted to behold the stream again in full flow, and the sheets of surface water as large, and as fine as when we first saw them yesterday.  I was puzzled at this singular circumstance, and concluded that the earthquake had shaken the foundations of the hills, and thus forced the water up; but from whatsoever cause it proceeded, I was exceedingly glad to see it.  To-day was much cooler than yesterday.  At three p.m. the same time of day, we had another shock of earthquake similar to that of yesterday, only that the volcanic wave passed along a little northerly of the camp, and the sounds of breaking and falling rocks came from over the hills to the north-east of us.

Gibson was better on the 17th, and we moved the camp up into the glen where the surface water existed.  We pitched our encampment upon a small piece of rising ground, where there was a fine little pool of water in the creek bed, partly formed of rocks, over which the purling streamlet fell, forming a most agreeable little basin for a bath.