with counsel and advice; and though by his work—­for Tietkens was an eminent surveyor—­many hundreds of miles of previously unknown regions have been mapped, a grateful country has nothing to give in return!  We all know, though, how generous Governments are in such matters.  Did not Ernest Giles die, only the other day, in poverty and neglect?  I know he had a Government billet at 2 pounds 10 shillings a week, noble and generous reward for the best years of his life spent in toiling over the howling wilderness of the interior!  Doubtless all debts will be considered paid by the erection of a statue, and nine people out of ten will not have any notion of who the man was or what he has done!  Tietkens in 1889 led an expedition to determine the true extent of Lake Amadeus, the confines of which were marked as “probable.”  His work resulted in greatly decreasing the area of the lake, which now lies entirely in South Australia.  However, this side of the border he found the lake already mentioned, and, encircling it, returned to the point on the Adelaide-Port-Darwin telegraph line from which he had started.

The lake is surrounded, at a distance, by numerous sandstone ranges and hills, the drainage from them no doubt forming it.  Tietkens experienced rains in this region; no such luck fell our way, and everything was parched and drought-stricken.  I was able to identify the Winnecke Hills, and one or two others, but, having only a small map of this part of the country, could not locate many points.

Close to the Winnecke Hills we again surprised two gins hunting, and, amongst their spoils of the chase, were astonished to see a common domestic black cat, evidently just killed.  It must have wandered far from home!  One of the women took us to their camp and small well, which was in so awkward a situation that I decided not to do any work upon it.  Its position was in a very steep, narrow gorge in the sandstone, along which the camels could pass with difficulty.  There was no feed for our animals, except at the mouth of the gorge a mile distant, and then there was but little.  It would take three to work the well, leaving only one to look after the camp, and “tail” the horses and camels.  Since the supply was problematical, the well almost inaccessible, and waste of time the only likely result, we passed on—­the one and only occasion on which we left a well untried.  Numerous natives must have been in this camp, for I found no less than thirteen bark “portmanteaus.”  As the gin had shown us the well without demur, I left all these untouched.  It was a struggle between honesty and curiosity; but it seemed too mean to take things, however interesting, when they had been left so confidently unprotected.  And yet birds’ nests are robbed without any such scruples!  I had no hesitation, though, in taking the gin with us, in spite of her unwillingness, for famished horses must be relieved.  Once across the hills the sand-ridges became less high, were dotted with oaks, and even had some herbage growing on them.