he promised to give me his daughter Mary for a wife when I took him back to Fowler’s Bay.  Mary was a very pretty little girl.  But “I to wed with Coromantees?  Thoughts like these would drive me mad.  And yet I hold some (young) barbarians higher than the Christian cad.”  After our day’s rest we again proceeded on our journey, with all our water vessels replenished, and of course now found several other places on our route where rain-water was lying, and it seemed like being translated to a brighter sphere, to be able to indulge in as much water-drinking as we pleased.

(Illustration:  The hermit hill and Finniss springs.)

At one place where we encamped there was a cane grass flat, over a mile long, fifty to a hundred yards wide, and having about four feet of water in it, which was covered with water-fowl; amongst these a number of black swans were gracefully disporting themselves.  Peter Nicholls made frantic efforts to shoot a swan and some ducks, but he only brought one wretchedly small teal into the camp.  We continued on our former course until we touched upon and rounded the north-western extremity of Lake Torrens.  I then changed my course for the Hermit Hill, at the foot of which the Finniss Springs and Sir Thomas Elder’s cattle station lies.  Our course was now nearly north.  On the evening of the third day after leaving the water that had saved us, we fell in with two black fellows and their lubras or wives, shepherding two flocks of Mr. Angas’s sheep belonging to his Stuart’s Creek station.  As they were at a water, we encamped with them.  Their lubras were young and pretty; the men were very hospitable to us, and gave us some mutton, for which we gave them tobacco and matches; for their kindness I gave the pretty lubras some tea and sugar.  Our old Jimmy went up to them and shook hands, and they became great friends.  These blacks could not comprehend where we could possibly have come from, Fowler’s Bay being an unknown quantity to them.  We had still a good day’s stage before us to reach the Finniss, but at dusk we arrived, and were very kindly received and entertained by Mr. Coulthard, who was in charge.  His father had been an unfortunate explorer, who lost his life by thirst, upon the western shores of the Lake Torrens I have mentioned, his tin pannikin or pint pot was afterwards found with his name and the date of the last day he lived, scratched upon it.  Many an unrecorded grave, many a high and noble mind, many a gallant victim to temerity and thirst, to murder by relentless native tribes, or sad mischance, is hidden in the wilds of Australia, and not only in the wilds, but in places also less remote, where the whistle of the shepherd and the bark of his dog, the crack of the stockman’s whip, or the gay or grumbling voice of the teamster may now be heard, some unfortunate wanderer may have died.  As the poet says:—­

   “Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid,
    Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
    Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed,
    Or waked to ecstacy the living lyre.”