Upon leaving Pylebung Jimmy informed me that Mowling was the next watering-place, and said it lay nearly east from here; but I found we went nearly north-east to reach it; this we did in seventeen miles, the country through which we passed being, as usual, all sandhills and scrub.  Mowling consisted of a small acacia hollow, where there were a few boulders of granite; in these were two small holes, both as dry as the surface of the rocks in their vicinity.  On our route from Pylebung, we had seen the tracks of a single bullock; he also had found his way to Mowling, and probably left it howling; but it must have been some time since his visit.

From hence old Jimmy led us a good deal south of east, and we arrived at another exposure of granite rocks in the dense scrubs.  This place Jimmy called Whitegin.  It was ten or eleven miles from Mowling.  There was a small crevice between the rounded boulders of rock, which held barely sufficient water for the three horses, the camels getting none, though they persisted in bothering us all the afternoon, and appeared very thirsty.  They kept coming up to the camp perpetually, pulling our canvas bucket and tin utensils about with their lips, and I found the cunning of a camel in endeavouring to get water at the camp far exceeded that of any horse.

There were a few dozen acres of pretty ground here with good grass and herbage on it.  We had a great deal of trouble to-day in getting the camels along; the foal or calf belonging to the old riding-cow got itself entangled in its mother’s nose-rope, and as we did not then understand the management of camels, and how their nose-ropes should be adjusted, we could not prevent the little brute from tearing the button clean through the cartilage of the poor old cow’s nose; this not only caused the animal frightful pain, but made her more obstinate and stubborn and harder to get along than before.  The agony the poor creature suffered from flies must have been excruciating, as after this accident they entered her nostrils in such numbers that she often hung back, and would cough and snort until she had ejected a great quantity of blood and flies from her nose.

For the last few miles we had not been annoyed by quite so much spinifex as usual, but the vast amount of dead wood and underbrush was very detrimental to the progress of the camels, who are not usually in the habit of lifting their feet very high, though having the power, they learn it in time, but not before their toes got constantly entangled with the dead sticks, which made them very sore.

The scrub here and all the way we had come consisted mostly of mallee (Eucalyptus dumosa) mulga, prickly bushes (hakea), some grevillea-trees, and a few oaks (casuarinas).  This place, Whitegin, was eighty-five miles straight from Youldeh; we had, however, travelled about 100 miles to reach it, as Jimmy kept turning and twisting about in the scrubs in all directions.  On leaving Whitegin we travelled several degrees to