draw, and with one man, on foot, to pursue a due north course into the brush.  I hoped by this arrangement to gain the 27th parallel, and in so doing to satisfy myself as to the point on which I was so anxious.  I selected a fine young lad to accompany me, named Joseph Cowley, because I felt some confidence in his moral courage in the event of any disaster befalling us.  On this occasion I had the tank reconstructed, and took all the barrels I could, to enable me to go as far as possible, and the day after I returned to the camp with Mr. Poole, again left it with Mr. Stuart, Joseph, and Flood, in whose charge I intended to leave my horse during my absence—­during which I also proposed that Mr. Stuart should employ his time tracing in the hills.

We reached the muddy creek at the foot of the hills at 2 p.m., after a ride of 25 miles, over the stony and barren plains I have described, and as the distance to the next water was too great for us to attempt reaching it until late, we stopped here for the night.  Some natives had been on the creek in the early part of the day, and had apparently moved down it to the eastward.  The water had diminished fearfully since the time we passed on our return from the north.

The day was cool and pleasant, as the wind blew from the south, and the thermometer did not rise above 95 degrees.

We had not ridden four miles on the following morning, when we observed several natives on the plain at a little distance to the south, to whom we called out, and who immediately came to us.  We stopped with these people for more than two hours, in the hope that we should gain some information from them, either as to when we might expect rain, or of the character of the distant interior, but they spoke a language totally different from the river tribes, although they had some few words in common, so that I could not rely on my interpretation of what they said.  They were all of them circumcised, and all but one wanted the right front tooth of the upper jaw.  When we left these people I gave them a note for Mr. Poole, in the faint hope that they would deliver it, and I explained to them that he would give them a tomahawk and blankets, but, as I afterwards learnt, they never went to the camp.

When Mr. Browne and I were in this neighbourhood before, he had some tolerable sport shooting the new pigeon, the flesh of which was most delicious.  At that time they were feeding upon the seed of the rice grass, and were scattered about, but we now found them, as well as many other birds, congregated in vast numbers preparing to migrate to the north-east, apparently their direct line of migration; they were comparatively wild, so that our only chance of procuring any was when they came to water.