followed our tracks, and picked it up.  Charlie, without a moment’s questioning, brought it to me; he was too polite, too agreeable altogether, and evidently knew too much; he knew the country all the way to Perth, and also to Champion Bay.  It occurred to me that he had been somebody’s pet black boy, that had done something, and had bolted away.  He told me the nearest station to us was called Nyngham, Mount Singleton on the chart, in a north-west direction.  The station belonged, he said, to a Mr. Cook, and that we could reach it in four days, but as I wished to make south-westerly for Perth, I did not go that way.  The day was very warm, thermometer 99 degrees in shade.

(Illustration:  The first white man met in western Australia.)

This mount is called Geelabing on the chart, but Charlie did not know it by that name.  He and the other two came on and camped with us that night.  Our course was nearly south-west; we only travelled eleven miles.  The following day our three friends departed, as they said, to visit Nyngham, while we pursued our own course, and reached the shores of the dry salt-lake Moore.  In about thirty miles we found some rock water-holes, and encamped on the edge of the lake, where we saw old horse and cattle tracks.  We next crossed the lake-bed, which was seven miles wide.  No doubt there is brine in some parts of it, but where I crossed it was firm and dry.  We left it on the 30th of October, and travelling upon a course nearly west-south-west, we struck some old dray tracks, at a dried-up spring, on the 3rd of November, which I did not follow, as they ran eastwards.  From there I turned south, and early on the 4th we came upon an outlying sheep station; its buildings consisting simply of a few bark-gunyahs.  There was not even a single, rude hut in the dingle; blacks’ and whites’ gunyahs being all alike.  Had I not seen some clothes, cooking utensils, etc., at one of them, I should have thought that only black shepherds lived there.  A shallow well, and whip for raising the water into a trough, was enclosed by a fence, and we watered our camels there.  The sheep and shepherd were away, and although we were desperately hungry for meat, not having had any for a month, we prepared to wait until the shepherd should come home in the evening.  While we were thinking over these matters, a white man came riding up.  He apparently did not see us, nor did his horse either, until they were quite close; then his horse suddenly stopped and snorted, and he shouted out, “Holy sailor, what’s that?” He was so extraordinarily surprised at the appearance of the caravan that he turned to gallop away.  However, I walked to, and reassured him, and told him who I was and where I had come from.  Of course he was an Irishman, and he said, “Is it South Austhralia yez come from?  Shure I came from there meself.  Did yez crass any say?  I don’t know, sure I