Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/323

 we should have been eaten alive; here we had no such luxuries; what little we had was just enough to cover the face, and no more. No end of ducks' eggs found about the creek and swamps around. All hands jerking old "Ranger," except Poole, who is out with McKinlay on a scout to see the country towards the ranges to the east, some twenty miles from here.

Leaving Mr. Davis for a moment, we refer to Mr. McKinlay' s journal, where he reports upon this excursion in a way rather perplexing, if we are to understand he is passing through the famous "Stony Desert." And yet the characteristic features of the desert ever recur in stone and sand, cropping out amidst all the verdure called up as by enchantment after the late rains. He says:—

"'Sunday, March 16th. Went to have a view from the principal range eastward, the first and greater part of the road over magnificent pasture, nearer the hills very stony; found the hills distant twenty-one miles; from top of a large table-topped one I had a splendid view; the tier of ranges I am now on bear to east of north and west of south, but are very irregular, many spurs running off from main range, and forming a vast number of crown-shaped tops and peaked hills with innumerable creeks draining the country from east and south to west and north, and joining the main creek. Twenty-one miles travelled to-day, bearing 62½°; from this hill another tier of similar hills is seen in the distance with a very large creek, draining the country between this and that, flowing northward, and then west round the north end of the tier I am now upon. The south-west end of distant range bears 125° about twenty-five to thirty miles off,"