Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/275

 chirping merrily, and the old crows pleading their own cause vociferously. The flies, however, are worse, being driven into the tents and whirlies by the rain. The walking this morning was anything but pleasant, the mud being up and over our ankles, and it stuck so to our boots that it was with difficulty we could get ahead at all; and having to go three miles to bring up the camels, it became a very tiring job. The camels themselves could hardly make a walk of it at all, and were more like cats in walnut-shells on ice than anything I recollect having seen.

I expect we shall be able to start for the Desert to-morrow or the next day, as there must be abundance of water now in the claypans and holes, more than sufficient for our purpose. McKinlay has ordered all horses that require it to be shod, so I suppose the Stony Desert is the trip before us, and then on to Finnis' Springs to get our rations. Some of the flour we have been eating lately has had a very peculiar taste; indeed, some of it had got a touch of the naphtha or paraffine that was put on top of it, in its transit from Port Augusta to Blanchewater, and perhaps that has been the cause of the illness, and not the water. Middleton, Hodgkinson, and native returned. They report lots of rain-water this side of Lake McKinlay, and plenty in the lake itself, and good, with lots of natives on the banks; but as the rain has