ground, and the man wore the shirt, which scarcely adorned him enough.  I gave them some breakfast and they went away, but returned very punctually to dinner.  Then I determined not to allow them to remain any longer near us, so ordered them off, and they departed, apparently very reluctantly.  I felt very much inclined to keep the little girl.  Although no doubt they still continued watching us, we saw them no more.

I got Mr. Young to plant various seeds round this well.  No doubt there must be other waters in this neighbourhood, as none of the natives have used our well since we came, but we could not find any other.

The following day was Sunday.  What a scene our camp would have presented to-day had these reptiles murdered us!  It does not strike the traveller in the wilderness, amongst desert scenes and hostile Indians, as necessary that he should desire the neighbourhood of a temple, or even be in a continual state of prayer, yet we worship Nature, or the God of Nature, in our own way; and although we have no chapel or church to go to, yet we are always in a temple, which a Scottish poet has so beautifully described as “The Temple of Nature.”  He says:—­

   “Talk not of temples; there is one,
    Built without hands, to mankind given;
    Its lamps are the meridian sun,
    And the bright stars of heaven. 
    Its walls are the cerulean sky,
    Its floor the earth so green and fair;
    Its dome is vast immensity: 
    All nature worships there.”

We, of a surety, have none of the grander features of Nature to admire; but the same Almighty Power which smote out the vast Andean Ranges yet untrod, has left traces of its handywork here.  Even the great desert in which we have so long been buried must suggest to the reflecting mind either God’s perfectly effected purpose, or His purposely effected neglect; and, though I have here and there found places where scanty supplies of the element of water were to be found, yet they are at such enormous distances apart, and the regions in which they exist are of so utterly worthless a kind, that it seems to be intended by the great Creator that civilised beings should never re-enter here.  And then our thoughts must naturally wander to the formation and creation of those mighty ships of the desert, that alone could have brought us here, and by whose strength and incomprehensible powers of endurance, only are we enabled to leave this desert behind.  In our admiration of the creature, our thoughts are uplifted in reverence and worship to the Designer and Creator of such things, adapted, no doubt, by a wise selection from an infinite variety of living forms, for myriads of creative periods, and with a foreknowledge that such instruments would be requisite for the intelligent beings of a future time, to traverse those areas of the desert earth that it had pleased Him in wisdom to permit to remain secluded from the more lovely places of the world and