The next day, the 28th of February, Gibson and Jimmy went to look for the mob of horses.  There was a watering-place about two miles and a half south from here, where emus used to water, and where the horses did likewise; there they found all the horses.  There was a very marked improvement in their appearance, they had thriven splendidly.  There is fine green feed here, and it is a capital place for an explorer’s depot, it being such an agreeable and pretty spot.  Gibson and Jimmy went to hunt for emus, but we had none for supper.  We got a supply of pigeons for breakfast.  Each day we more deeply lament that the end of our ammunition is at hand.  For dinner we got some hawks, crows, and parrots.  I don’t know which of these in particular disagreed with me, but I suppose the natural antipathy of these creatures to one another, when finding themselves somewhat crowded in my interior, was casus belli enough to set them quarrelling even after death and burial; all I knew was the belli was going on in such a peculiar manner that I had to abandon my dinner almost as soon as I had eaten it.  It is now absolutely necessary to kill a horse for food, as our ammunition is all but gone.  Mr. Tietkens and I went to find a spot to erect a smoke-house, which required a soft bank for a flue; we got a place half a mile away.  Thermometer 104 degrees.  Mr. Tietkens and I commenced operations at the smoke-house, and the first thing we did was to break the axe handle.  Gibson, who thought he was a carpenter, blacksmith, and jack-of-all-trades by nature, without art, volunteered to make a new one, to which no one objected.  The new handle lasted until the first sapling required was almost cut in two, when the new handle came in two also; so we had to return to the camp, while Gibson made another handle on a new principle.  With this we worked while Gibson and Jimmy shod a couple of horses.  A pair of poking brutes of horses are always away by themselves, and Mr. Tietkens and I went to look for, but could not find them.  We took the shovel and filled up the emu water-hole with sand, so that the horses had to show themselves with the others at the pass at night.  For two or three days we shod horses, shot pigeons, and worked at the smoke-house.  I did not like the notion of killing any of the horses, and determined to make a trip eastwards, to see what the country in that direction was like.  We chopped up some rifle bullets for shot, to enable Gibson and Jimmy to remain while we were away, as a retreat to Fort Mueller from here was a bitter idea to me.  Before I can attempt to penetrate to the west, I must wait a change in the weather.  The sky was again becoming cloudy, and I had hopes of rain at the approaching equinox.