to find upon the face of the earth.  We are not, indeed, actually destitute of clothes, but, saving our best for future emergencies, we keep continually patching our worst garments, hence our peculiar appearance, as our hats, shirts, and trousers, are here and there, so quilted with bits of old cloth, canvas, calico, basil, greenhide, and old blanket, that the original garment is scarcely anywhere visible.  In the matter of boots the traveller must be able to shoe himself as well as his horses in these wild regions of the west.  The explorer indeed should be possessed of a good few accomplishments—­amongst these I may enumerate that he should be able to make a pie, shoe himself or his horse, jerk a doggerel verse or two, not for himself, but simply for the benefit or annoyance of others, and not necessarily for publication, nor as a guarantee of good faith; he must be able to take, and make, an observation now and again, mend a watch, kill or cure a horse as the times may require, make a pack-saddle, and understand something of astronomy, surveying, geography, geology, and mineralogy, et hoc, simile huic.

With regard to shoeing oneself, I will give my reader some idea of what strength is required for boots in this country.  I repaired mine at Fort Mueller with a double sole of thick leather, with sixty horseshoe nails to each boot, all beautifully clenched within, giving them a soft and Turkish carpet-like feeling to the feet inside; then, with an elegant corona of nail-heads round the heel and plates at the toes, they are perfect dreadnoughts, and with such understandings I can tread upon a mountain with something like firmness, but they were nearly the death of me afterwards for all that.

In the shade of our caves here the thermometer does not rise very high, but in the external glen, where we sleep in the open air, it is no cooler.

On the 29th we left this cool and shady spot—­cool and shady, however, only amongst the caves—­and continued our march still westward, along the slopes of the range.

In eight miles we crossed ten creeks issuing from glens or gorges in the range; all that I inspected had rocky basins, with more or less water in them.  Other creeks were seen ahead, but no view could be got of any horizon to the west; only the northern and eastern ones being open to our view.  The country surrounding the range to the north appeared to consist of open red sandhills, with casuarina in the hollows between.  At sixteen miles I found a large rocky tarn in a creek-gorge; but little or no grass for the horses—­indeed, the whole country at the foot of this range is very bare of that commodity, except at Sladen Water, where it is excellent.

Since we left Sladen Water the horses have not done well, and the slopes of this range being so rough and stony, many of them display signs of sorefootedness.  I cannot expect the range to continue farther than another day’s stage; and though I cannot see its end, yet I feel ’tis near.