Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/357

 of the country in these latitudes. The corps of cavalry police of South Australia are second to none in the Colonies, and are as fine a body of men, both as regards education and esprit de corps, as one would wish to see, and Mr. Hamilton may well be proud of his command. They are few in number, more's the pity; but they are the right sort.

The ranges on the east side of the creek Mr. McKinlay has named after Kirby, to commemorate his providential escape, not but what I fancy it will never require the chart to remind my friend Kirby of those here ranges. Plenty of mussels in a little water here. Strange it is that now we have killed a bullock, we could shoot any quantity of curillas, hawks, etc.

Fine pastoral country, the Government ought to make each of us a present of a bit of it somewhere out here toward the Gulf. We would soon get it stocked, I warrant you, if we go to the Gulf and back to Adelaide all well, under the guidance of John McKinlay, Esq., our worthy old leader. I hope he won't punch my head for calling him "old," for since I wrote this in the "far countree." he has taken unto himself a superior moiety, so I do not mean the word to be taken in its literal sense. Some government or other, I don't care which, ought at all events to give him a tidy slice of all the plum-pudding—stone, etc. etc.—that he has