halfway, but now they looked utterly unable to return. What a strange
maze of imagination the mind can wander in when recalling the names of
those separated features, the only ones at present known to supply
water in this latitude--that is to say, the Murchison River, and this
new-found Rawlinson Range, named after two Presidents of the Royal
Geographical Society of London. The late and the present, the living
and the dead, physically and metaphysically also, are not these
features, as the men, separated alike by the great gulf of the
unknown, by a vast stretch of that undiscovered country from whose
bourne no traveller returns?

The sun went down, and I returned to my youthful companion with the
horses below. We were fifty-one miles from the water we had left. The
horses were pictures of misery, old Buggs's legs had swelled greatly
from the contusions he had received in falling on the slippery rocks.
The old black mare which I rode, though a sorry hack, looked worse
than I had ever seen her before, and even the youthful and
light-heeled and -hearted Diaway hung his head, and one could almost
span him round the flanks. The miserable appearance of the animals was
caused as much by want of food as want of water, for they have
scarcely eaten a mouthful since we left the pass; indeed, all they had
seen to eat was not inviting.

We slowly left these desolate ridges behind, and at fifteen miles we
camped, Jimmy and I being both hungry and thirsty. Our small supply of
water only tantalised, without satisfying us whenever we took a
mouthful. We now found we had nothing to eat, at least nothing cooked,
and we had to sacrifice a drop of our stock of water to make a
Johnny-cake. It was late by the time we had eaten our supper, and I
told Jimmy he had better go to sleep if he felt inclined; I then