Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/337

 with the "ardent" if you wished. Plain food, God knows it is plain, no "provocatives," nothing to hurt us, so how are we likely to get ill? We killed a sheep to-day, and we are to have two a week to vary the food. Verily, in this instance variety is charming, when you can get it.

31st. Came over some nasty swampy ground to-day for eight miles, when we rounded a large table-topped hill, crossed a flat-topped one, and descended again into the swampy country; the main creek passes through a gorge in the hills, and then branches off into innumerable smaller ones. I wish we were out of this low swampy country—looks like fever and ague—a pleasant thing to have clinging to you on the march. The floods must be severe here, I should think, judging from the drift-wood and scrub left in the trunks of tho trees, some twelve to twenty feet from the ground. The hills Mr. McKinlay has called "Hamilton," after G. Hamilton, Esq., inspector of police in Adelaide, and the gorge through which the river passes, "Hunter."

We are to-day some 360 to 370 miles from Peak Downs, due east of us, and about the same distance from the head of the Gulf of Carpentaria. We were all wishing we could make off for the "Downs" to get some flour and tea, and especially tobacco, as we have none, and we all feel the want thereof.