will believe, knew me well, as indeed did all the horses, for I had stood by to see them watered many a time.  Mr. Stuart rode Mr. Browne’s horse, a little animal, but one of great endurance also; Mack used a horse we called the Roan, a hunter that had been Mr. Poole’s.  Morgan rode poor Punch, whose name I have before had occasion to mention, and who, notwithstanding subsequent rest, had not recovered from the fatigues of his northern excursion.  Besides these we had four pack horses:—­Bawley, a strong and compact little animal, with a blaze on the forehead, high spirited, with a shining coat, and having been a pet, was up to all kind of tricks, but was a general favourite, and a nice horse;—­the other was Traveller, a light chesnut, what the hunter would call a washy brute, always eating and never fat;—­the Colt, so called from his being young, certainly unequal to such a journey as that on which he was taken;—­and Slommy, another aged horse.  During the summer, Traveller had had a great discharge from the nose, and I was several times on the point of ordering him to be shot, under an apprehension that his disease was the glanders; but, although the colt and my own horse contracted it, I postponed my final mandate, and all recovered; however, he continued weak.  At this time they were unshod, and had pretty well worn their hoofs down to the quick, insomuch that any inequality in the ground made them limp, and it was distressing to ride them; but, notwithstanding, they bore up singularly against the changes and fatigues they had to go through.

From a small rising ground near where we stopped in the valley, on the occasion of which I am speaking, and in the obscure light of departing day we saw to the N.N.W. a line of dark looking hills, at the distance of about ten or twelve miles, but we could not discover tree or bush upon them, all we could make out was that they were dark objects above the line of horizon, and that the intervening country seemed to be as dark as they were.  The weather had changed from cold to hot, the wind having flown from S. to the N.E., and the day and night were exceedingly warm.  I was sorry to observe, too, that the horses had scarcely touched the grass on which, for their sakes, I had been tempted to stop, and that they were evidently suffering from the previous day’s journey of from 34 to 36 miles, that being about the distance we had left the water in the grassy valley.  Before mounting, on the morning of the 21st, Mr. Stuart and I went to see if we could make out more than we had been able to do the night before, what kind of country was in front of us, but we were disappointed, and found that we should have to wait patiently until we got nearer the hills to judge of their formation.  About half a mile below where we had slept, the valley led to the N.N.E., and on turning, we found it there opened at once upon the Stony Desert; but the hills were now hid from us by sandy undulations to our left, and even when we got well into the plain we could