I walked down and saw a large well with a good body of water in it, evidently permanently supplied by the drainage of the mass of bare rocks in its vicinity.  I was greatly pleased at Tommy’s discovery, and after giving Reechy a thorough good drink, off he went like a rocket after the party.  I wandered about, but found no other water-place; and then, thinking of the days that were long enough ago, I sat in the shade of an umbrageous acacia bush.  Soon I heard the voices of the angels, native black and fallen angels, and their smokes came gradually nearer.  I thought they must have seen me on the top of the rocks, and desired to make my further acquaintance.  The advancing party, however, turned out to be only two women coming for water to the well.  They had vessels, usually called coolamins—­these are small wooden troughs, though sometimes made of bark, and are shaped like miniature canoes—­for carrying water to their encampment.  When they came near enough to see what I was, they ran away a short distance, then stopped, turned round, and looked at me.  Of course I gave a gentle bow, as to something quite uncommon; a man may bend his lowest in a desert to a woman.  I also made signs for them to come to the well, but they dropped their bark coolamins and walked smartly off.  I picked up these things, and found them to be of a most original, or rather aboriginal, construction.  They were made of small sheets of the yellow-tree bark, tied up at the ends with bark-string, thus forming small troughs.  When filled, some grass or leaves are put on top of the water to prevent it slopping over.  The women carry these troughs on their heads.  I was not near enough to distinguish whether the women were beautiful or not; all I could make out was that one was young and fatter than the other.  Amongst aborigines of every clime fatness goes a great way towards beauty.  The youngest and fattest was the last to decamp.

These were the first natives I had seen upon this expedition; no others appeared while I was by myself.  In about four hours the party arrived; they had travelled six miles past the place when Tommy overtook them.  We soon watered all the camels; they were extremely thirsty, for they had travelled 202 miles from Queen Victoria’s Spring, although, in a straight line, we were only 180 miles from it.  Almost immediately upon the arrival of the caravan, a number of native men and one young boy made their appearance.  They were apparently quiet and inoffensive, and some of them may have seen white people before, for one or two spoke a few English words, such as “white fellow,” “what name,” “boy,” etc.  They seemed pleased, but astonished to see the camels drink such an enormous quantity of water; they completely emptied the well, and the natives have probably never seen it empty before.  The water drained in pretty fast:  in an hour the well was as full as ever, and with much purer water than formerly.  There was plenty of splendid herbage and leguminous bushes here for the camels.  It is altogether a most romantic and pretty place; the little grassy channels were green and fresh-looking, and the whole space for a mile around open, and dotted with shady acacia trees and bushes.  Between two fine acacias, nearly under the edge of a huge, bare expanse of rounded rock, our camp was fixed.  The slope of the whole area is to the west.