two of my former expedition horses; Tommy and Hippy I bought a second time from Carmichael, when coming up to the Peake.  Tommy was poor, old, and footsore, the most wonderful horse for his size in harness I ever saw.  Badger, his mate, was a big ambling cob, able to carry a ton, but the greatest slug of a horse, I ever came across; he seems absolutely to require flogging as a tonic; he must be flogged out of camp, and flogged into it again, mile after mile, day after day, from water and to it.  He was now, as usual, at the tail of the straggling mob, except Gibson’s former riding-horse called Trew.  He was an excellent little horse, but now so terribly footsore he could scarcely drag himself along; he was one of six best of the lot.  If I put them in their order I should say, Banks, the Fair Maid of Perth, Trew, Guts (W.A.), Diaway, Blackie and Darkie, Widge, the big cob Buggs—­the flea-bitten grey—­Bluey, Badger, who was a fine ambling saddle-horse, and Tommy; the rest might range anyhow.  The last horse of all was the poor little shadow of a cob, the harness-mate of the one killed at Elder’s Creek.  On reaching the stones this poor little ghost fell, never again to rise.  We could give him no relief, we had to push on.  Guts gave in on the stones; I let him go and walked to the water.  I need scarcely say how thirsty we all were.  On reaching the water, and wasting no time, Mr. Tietkens and I returned to the three fallen horses, taking with us a supply of water, and using the Fair Maid, Widge, Formby, and Darkie; we went as fast as the horses could go.  On reaching the little cob we found him stark and stiff, his hide all shrivelled and wrinkled, mouth wide open, and lips drawn back to an extraordinary extent.  Pushing on we arrived where Diamond and Pratt had fallen.  They also were quite dead, and must have died immediately after they fell; they presented the same appearance as the little cob.  Thus my visit to the North-west Mountain had cost the lives of four horses, Bluey, Diamond, Pratt, and the cob.  The distance they had to travel was not great—­less than ninety miles—­and they were only two nights without water; but the heat was intense, the country frightful, and to get over the distance as soon as possible, we may have travelled rather fast.  The horses had not been well off for either grass or water at starting, and they were mostly footsore; but in the best of cases, and under the most favourable start from a water, the ephemeral thread of a horse’s life may be snapped in a moment, in the height of an Australian summer, in such a region as this, where that detestable vegetation, the triodia, and high and rolling sandhills exist for such enormous distances.  The very sight of the country, in all its hideous terrors clad, is sufficient to daunt a man and kill a horse.  I called the vile mountain which had caused me this disaster, Mount Destruction, for a visit to it had destroyed alike my horses and my hopes.  I named the range of which it is the highest point, Carnarvon Range.