north of east, the thermometer in the shade while we rested there going up to 103 degrees.  Jimmy said the next place we should get water at was Wynbring, and from what we could make out of his jargon, he seemed to imply that Wynbring was a large watercourse descending from a mountain and having a stony bed; he also said we were now close up, and that it was only a pickaninny way.  However, the shades of night descended upon us once more in the scrubs of this desert, and we were again compelled to encamp in a place lonely, and without water, amidst the desolations of this scrub-enthroned tract.  Choking with thirst and sleepless with anxiety, we pass the hours of night; no dews descend upon this heated place, and though towards dawn a slightly cooler temperature is felt, the reappearance of the sun is now so near, that there has been no time for either earth or man to be benefited by it.  Long before the sun himself appears, those avant-couriers of his fiery might, heated glow, and feverish breeze, came rustling through the foliage of the mallee-trees, which give out the semblance of a mournful sigh, as though they too suffered from the heat and thirst of this desolate region, in which they are doomed by fate to dwell, and as though they desired to let the wanderers passing amongst them know, that they also felt, and were sorry for, our woes.

The morning of March 31st was exceedingly hot, the thermometer at dawn standing at 86 degrees.  We were up and after the camels and horses long before daylight, tracking them by the light of burning torches of great bunches and boughs of the mallee trees—­these burn almost as well green as dry, from the quantity of aromatic eucalyptic oil contained in them—­and enormous plots of spinifex which we lighted as we passed.

Having secured all the animals, we started early, and were moving onwards before sunrise.  From Whitegin I found we had come on a nearly north-east course, and at twenty-eight miles from thence the scrubs fell off a trifle in height and density.  This morning our guide travelled much straighter than was usual with him, and it was evident he had now no doubt that he was going in the right direction.  About ten o’clock, after we had travelled thirteen or fourteen miles, Jimmy uttered an exclamation, pointed out something to us, and declared that it was Wynbring.  Then I could at once perceive how excessively inaccurate, the old gentleman’s account of Wynbring had been, for instead of its being a mountain, it was simply a round bare mass of stone, standing in the centre of an open piece of country, surrounded as usual by the scrubs.  When we arrived at the rock, we found the large creek channel, promised us had microscopicated itself down to a mere rock-hole, whose dimensions were not very great.  The rock itself was a bare expanse of granite, an acre or two in extent, and was perhaps fifty feet high, while the only receptacle for water about it was a crevice forty feet long, by four feet wide, with a depth of six feet in its deepest part.  The hole was not full, but it held an ample supply for all our present requirements.