exhibited a condition that astonished us all.  He was absolutely fat, and yet his face did not at all indicate such a change.  If he had been fed in the dark like capons, he could not have got into better condition.  Mr. Browne was anxious to accompany him, but I thought that if his suspicions were aroused he would not return, and I therefore let him depart as he came.  With him all our hopes vanished, for even the presence of that savage was soothing to us, and so long as he remained, we indulged in anticipations as to the future.  From the time of his departure a gloomy silence pervaded the camp; we were, indeed, placed under the most trying circumstances; every thing combined to depress our spirits and exhaust our patience.  We had gradually been deserted by every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air.  We had witnessed migration after migration of the feathered tribes, to that point to which we were so anxious to push our way.  Flights of cockatoos, of parrots, of pigeons, and of bitterns, birds also whose notes had cheered us in the wilderness, all had taken the same high road to a better and more hospitable region.  The vegetable kingdom was at a stand, and there was nothing either to engage the attention or attract the eye.  Our animals had laid the ground bare for miles around the camp, and never came towards it but to drink.  The axe had made a broad gap in the line of gum-trees which ornamented the creek, and had destroyed its appearance.  We had to witness the gradual and fearful diminution of the water, on the possession of which our lives depended; day after day we saw it sink lower and lower, dissipated alike by the sun and the winds.  From its original depth of nine feet, it now scarcely measured two, and instead of extending from bank to bank it occupied only a narrow line in the centre of the channel.  Had the drought continued for a month longer than it pleased the Almighty to terminate it, that creek would have been as dry as the desert on either side.  Almost heart-broken, Mr. Browne and I seldom left our tents, save to visit our sick companion.  Mr. Browne had for some time been suffering great pain in his limbs, but with a generous desire to save me further anxiety carefully concealed it from me; but it was his wont to go to some acacia trees in the bed of the creek to swing on their branches, as he told me to exercise his muscles, in the hope of relaxing their rigidity.

One day, when I was sitting with Mr. Poole, he suggested the erection of two stations, one on the Red Hill and the other on the Black Hill, as points for bearings when we should leave the Depot.  The idea had suggested itself to me, but I had observed that we soon lost sight of the hills in going to the north-west; and that, therefore, for such a purpose, the works would be of little use, but to give the men occupation; and to keep them in health I employed them in erecting a pyramid of stones on the summit of the Red Hill.  It is twenty-one feet at the base, and eighteen feet high, and bears 329 degrees from the camp, or 31 degrees to the west of north.  I little thought when I was engaged in that work, that I was erecting Mr. Poole’s monument, but so it was, that rude structure looks over his lonely grave, and will stand for ages as a record of all we suffered in the dreary region to which we were so long confined.