Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/330

 close the central region on the 21st, and open the tropical in the succeeding chapter on the 22nd April. The position is in south latitude about 21° 45', and it is where the party have just crossed the dividing range and are descending its northern slopes to find the waters henceforward taking a northerly course like their own.

We are now in the autumn of the antipodes and in latitudes bordering on either side of the tropical line, so that, but for the moisture with which the late rains have covered the country all around them, the travellers would have found the weather much hotter and less comfortable than it actually was. The cold at night was sometimes intense, although the days were hot under a bright sun. For example, McKinlay says, on 6th April, "Beautiful cold morning," and on 7th, "Exceedingly cold during the night," and again on the 13th, "Evenings, nights, and mornings beautifully cool; the days hot enough."

The country was often exceedingly beautiful in its luxuriance of vegetation; for instance, on 3rd April we find the party "camped on a magnificent lagoon, about one mile long and about two hundred yards wide—a perfect flower-garden." But the cause of all these beauties—the late abundant rains, had brought also its disagreeables to the travellers in the generally wet and boggy state of the country; there were many running creeks—a