Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/384

 so did Bell, and quite forgot the bread till we had nearly finished our roast mutton and soup. The governor had brought us some salt from the salt lagoons, and we should have been as jolly as sand-boys had we only got the camels here with us, as it is a sad damper to us now not having found them.

16th. Mr. McKinlay, Bell, and self off early after the camels, but could see nothing of them. A few bushes were bitten, so we still kept on till we arrived at the old camp, where Bell and self had the al fresco turn in, where we had a little lunch, and turned the horses out, and rested a bit for an hour; then off we started across a large plain, when we saw at the distance of half a mile the old female camel walking very quietly towards the south. We then shaped our course, and stopped her, and then we saw the others marching straight ahead. We soon collared them, and turned them on the way to camp, the governor leading. It was a mere chance we found them, for we could not track them; it was just luck, and nothing else.

17th. Started early for the lagoon, some twenty miles distant, where Middleton and Poole had been left, and where Hodgkinson and Maitland had gone with their grub on the 15th.

All the grass around us is one mass of flame, and what was beautiful grass is now