Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/267

 will take some time to get there from the north on account of the many lakes and creeks it will have to fill on its way. They returned about 5, very hungry, as they generally were after a trip, and had seen no signs of a flood. There is seven or eight feet of water in this creek now, and first-rate water it is, but it is receding fast, for every morning we look to the gauge, a stick stuck in the mud graduated to inches, so that it is easily determined how much it recedes per diem; it is going at the rate of three-quarters of an inch a day.

I wonder if McKinlay will order us to dig a well here also; I should not be surprised, but there is enough water, provided it does not go bad, to last us for years; never mind if he does, there is nothing like healthy exercise, is there, reader? Talk of the old English game of cricket, it is nothing to digging wells when there is water close to camp; it keeps us from mischief and growling, and that is a great desideratum.

There are, McKinlay says, any number of natives up this creek, which is five or six miles long; he saw between 400 and 500. He did not go up to their whirlies, but from the number he saw he computed them as numerous as stated. There was a small camp close by, but they were gone to join the main body, for what reason deponent knoweth not, as we have never molested them. They pass