They never did, nor did the loose horse tracks either.  Generally speaking, whenever I saw a shady desert oak-tree there was an enormous bulldog ants’ nest under it, and I was prevented from sitting in its shade.  On what I thought was the 27th I almost gave up the thought of walking any farther, for the exertion in this dreadful region, where the triodia was almost as high as myself, and as thick as it could grow, was quite overpowering, and being starved, I felt quite light-headed.  After sitting down, on every occasion when I tried to get up again, my head would swim round, and I would fall down oblivious for some time.  Being in a chronic state of burning thirst, my general plight was dreadful in the extreme.  A bare and level sandy waste would have been Paradise to walk over compared to this.  My arms, legs, thighs, both before and behind, were so punctured with spines, it was agony only to exist; the slightest movement and in went more spines, where they broke off in the clothes and flesh, causing the whole of the body that was punctured to gather into minute pustules, which were continually growing and bursting.  My clothes, especially inside my trousers, were a perfect mass of prickly points.

My great hope and consolation now was that I might soon meet the relief party.  But where was the relief party?  Echo could only answer—­where?  About the 29th I had emptied the keg, and was still over twenty miles from the Circus.  Ah! who can imagine what twenty miles means in such a case?  But in this April’s ivory moonlight I plodded on, desolate indeed, but all undaunted, on this lone, unhallowed shore.  At last I reached the Circus, just at the dawn of day.  Oh, how I drank! how I reeled! how hungry I was! how thankful I was that I had so far at least escaped from the jaws of that howling wilderness, for I was once more upon the range, though still twenty miles from home.

There was no sign of the tracks, of any one having been here since I left it.  The water was all but gone.  The solitary eagle still was there.  I wondered what could have become of Gibson; he certainly had never come here, and how could he reach the fort without doing so?

I was in such a miserable state of mind and body, that I refrained from more vexatious speculations as to what had delayed him:  I stayed here, drinking and drinking, until about ten a.m., when I crawled away over the stones down from the water.  I was very footsore, and could only go at a snail’s pace.  Just as I got clear of the bank of the creek, I heard a faint squeak, and looking about I saw, and immediately caught, a small dying wallaby, whose marsupial mother had evidently thrown it from her pouch.  It only weighed about two ounces, and was scarcely furnished yet with fur.  The instant I saw it, like an eagle I pounced upon it and ate it, living, raw, dying—­fur, skin, bones, skull, and all.  The delicious taste of that creature I shall never forget.  I only wished I had its