This spring could not be the only water in this region; I believe there was plenty more in the immediate neighbourhood, as the natives never came to water here.  It was singular how we should have dropped upon such a scene, and penetrated thus the desert’s vastness, to the scrub-secluded fastness of these Austral-Indians’ home.  Mr. Young and I collected a great many specimens of plants, flowers, insects, and reptiles.  Among the flowers was the marvellous red, white, blue, and yellow wax-like flower of a hideous little gnarled and stunted mallee-tree; it is impossible to keep these flowers unless they could be hermetically preserved in glass; all I collected and most carefully put away in separate tin boxes fell to pieces, and lost their colours.  The collection of specimens of all kinds got mislaid in Adelaide.  Some grass-trees grew in the vicinity of this spring to a height of over twenty feet.  On the evening of the 5th of October a small snake and several very large scorpions came crawling about us as we sat round the fire; we managed to bottle the scorpions, but though we wounded the snake it escaped; I was very anxious to methylate him also, but it appeared he had other ideas, and I should not be at all surprised if a pressing interview with his undertaker was one of them.

One evening a discussion arose about the moon, and Saleh was trying to teach Tommy something, God knows what, about it.  Amongst other assertions he informed Tommy that the moon travelled from east to west, “because, you see, Tommy,” he said, “he like the sun—­sun travel west too.”  Tommy shook his head very sapiently, and said, “No, I don’t think that, I think moon go the other way.”  “No fear,” said Saleh, “how could it?” Then Peter Nicholls was asked, and he couldn’t tell; he thought Saleh was right, because the moon did set in the west.  So Tommy said, “Oh, well, I’ll ask Mr. Giles,” and they came to where Mr. T, Mr. Y., and I were seated, and told us the argument.  I said, “No, Saleh, the moon travels just the other way.”  Then Tommy said, “I tole you so, I know,” but of course he couldn’t explain himself.  Saleh was scandalised, and all his religious ideas seemed upset.  So I said, “Well, now, Saleh, you say the moon travels to the west; now do you see where she is to-night, between those two stars?” “Oh, yes,” he said, “I see.”  I said, “If to-morrow night she is on the east side of that one,” pointing to one, “she must have travelled east to get there, mustn’t she?” “Oh, no,” said Saleh, “she can’t go there, she must come down west like the sun,” etc.  In vain we showed him the next night how she had moved still farther east among the stars; that was nothing to him.  It would have been far easier to have converted him to Christianity than to make him alter his original opinion.  With regard to Tommy’s ideas, I may say that nearly all Australian natives are familiar with the motions of the heavenly bodies, knowing the difference between a star and a planet, and all tribes that I have been acquainted with have proper names for each, the moon also being a very particular object of their attention.