Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/135

 seemed to be at rest except ourselves. We woke the echoes of the night with many a song of home, and love, and blighted hopes.

20th. Strike camp, with the natives for our guides, at 5, thermometer 59° in the tent. We started at 7.30 ; we crossed a succession of sand hills, afterwards well-grassed, flooded flats, and arrived at Cudgeecudgeena, about 10, passing a dry lake in our way. Mr. McKinlay has called this Lake Cudgeecudgeena, "Lake Buchanan," after Mr. Buchanan, of Anlaby, the gentleman who showed us such kindness on the way out, and a small hill, on the south-west side of it, he has named "Anlaby," after Mr. Buchanan's station.

The day was fearfully hot, the dry, hot sand piercing the boots of those who were obliged to walk; it was fearful, and made one and all of us unfit for work: nevertheless we were obliged to build a sheep-yard, and, the timber not being very close, it proved a much longer job than we approved of. Quite knocked up, and too tired to put the tents up, slept with mother earth for our bed, and the canopy of heaven for our tent. We kept watch, however, but each man was right glad when his two hours' guard was over.

Lake Cudgeecudgeena is very pretty from our camp, the water beautifully clear, with belts of timber all round; the pelican, ducks, geese, and other water-fowls, are here in thousands on its