6TH MARCH.--The drays not having come up, in consequence of the excessive
length of yesterday's journey, and very hot weather--(16½ miles by
latitude alone)--we were obliged to remain inactive here on a beautiful
cool morning. I found near the ponds, several huts made of fresh branches
of trees and the remains of fires, doubtless the deserted home of the
fugitives of yesterday. At these fires I found the roasted pods of the
acacia already mentioned (Mùnumulà). The water was surrounded by fresh
herbage, and such was the simple fare of those aborigines, such the home
whence they fled. As I looked at it in the presence of my sable guides, I
could not but reflect that the white man's cattle would soon trample
these holes into a quagmire of mud, and destroy the surrounding verdure
and pleasant freshness for ever. I feared that my good-natured but acute
guides thought as much, and I blushed inwardly [*] for our pallid race.

[* The author of Waverley maintains that one may LAUGH inwardly--
conscience may, I suppose, make us also blush inwardly sometimes.]

All day we sat still in anxious suspense about the non-arrival of our
drays--the ground having been so good. With a country so interesting
before us, this delay was doubly irksome, and as the cattle could only be
watered by coming forward, why they did not come was the question; and
this was not solved until evening, when a messenger came forward to ask
if they might come, and to inform me that they were nearly exhausted. The
fatal alternative of endeavouring to make them work in the morning, after
passing a night without water, had been adopted, and as, on the day
before, they had been worked until dusk in expectation of reaching my
camp, they could not draw on the morning after; I instantly directed them
to be brought forward; but the consequence of this derangement was the
death of one, and much injury to many others. This contretemps arose