Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/233

 very original and amusing. We made a night of it—singing, throwing weights, etc.—but no grog, or perhaps we should not have gone to bed at all; first time I was ever without it—maybe it is all the better for us.

25th. Christmas-day: a sober and very quiet one it was, but we had a first-rate dinner off roast mutton and plum-pudding, and we made it as jolly as circumstances would allow; we had no cares or Christmas bills. This is, I suspect, the first English plum-pudding made and eaten on this lake, and I shall long remember this day. I have spent Christmas-day in many parts of the world, but this is the quietest I ever did see. I spent one coming down the Red Sea, and I thought that was bad enough, but I find there are worse places in the world to eat your Christmas dinner in than on board a fine Peninsular and Oriental steamer. It does not seem like Christmas, it is so hot, the wind quite a hot blast, and endless myriads of ants and flies teasing us to death—may we never spend another like it, say I. We roused the echoes a bit with songs, and many a cheer for absent friends and the girls we left behind us, drinking their healths in cold tea (if ever it did get cold), and so ended with us Christmas of 1861. Where shall we all be this time next year?

Any number of natives prowling about all round our camp; strict watch kept all night.