water, but they can go for ever without sleep; it is true they do sleep, but equally true that they can go without sleeping.  If I took my choice of all creation for a beast to guard and give me warning while I slept, I would select the horse, for he is the most sleepless creature Nature has made.  Horses seem to know this; for if you should by chance catch one asleep he seems very indignant either with you or himself.

It was absolutely necessary to give our horses a day’s rest, as they looked so much out of sorts this morning.  A quarter of the day was spent in watering them, and by that time it was quite hot, and we had to erect an awning for shade.  We were overrun by ants, and pestered by flies, so in self-defence we took another walk into the gullies, revisited the aboriginal National Gallery of paintings and hieroglyphics, and then returned to our shade and our ants.  Again we pored over the little German map, and again envied more prosperous explorers.  The thermometer had stood at 101 degrees in the shade, and the greatest pleasure we experienced that day was to see the orb of day descend.  The atmosphere had been surcharged all day with smoke, and haze hung over all the land, for the Autochthones were ever busy at their hunting fires, especially upon the opposite side of the great lake; but at night the blaze of nearer ones kept up a perpetual light, and though the fires may have been miles away they appeared to be quite close.  I also had fallen into the custom of the country, and had set fire to several extensive beds of triodia, which had burned with unabated fury; so brilliant, indeed, was the illumination that I could see to read by the light.  I kindled these fires in hopes some of the natives might come and interview us, but no doubt in such a poorly watered region the native population cannot be great, and the few who do inhabit it had evidently abandoned this particular portion of it until rains should fall and enable them to hunt while water remained in it.

Last night, the 23rd October, was sultry, and blankets utterly useless.  The flies and ants were wide awake, and the only thing we could congratulate ourselves upon, was the absence of mosquitoes.  At dawn the thermometer stood at 70 degrees and a warm breeze blew gently from the north.  The horses were found early, but as it took nearly three hours to water them we did not leave the glen till past eight o’clock.  This time I intended to return to the ridges we had last left, and which now bore a little to the west of south-west, twenty-one miles away.  We made a detour so as to inspect some other ridges near where we had been last.  Stony and low ridgy ground was first met, but the scrubs were all around.  At fifteen miles we came upon a little firm clayey plain with some salt bushes, and it also had upon it some clay pans, but they had long been dry.  We found the northern face of the ridges just as waterless as the southern, which we had previously searched.