Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/434

 in our present plight; the only plan is to go on, and chance coming on one en route. Distance to-day about twenty-two miles. Saw more dray tracks to-day, probably made by the same dray as the others were made by.

The old proverb sayeth that "hope deferred maketh the heart sick;" but I say that bad grub, and little of it, maketh you yearn after something better. We made a sweepstakes of £1 each, seven of us, each taking a day of the week determined by lots, and the holder of the ticket of the day on which we first make the habitation of a white man takes the £7.

18th. Fine cold morning, ice in all the pots. We found a very pretty fruit, a plum of a beautiful colour, and very good eating; the tree was covered, and we stopped under it for twenty minutes, one up in the tree throwing the fruit down, and we below stowing it away in bags, etc.; none of it quite ripe, but still when we got to camp we found it very good when boiled. After dinner we tried some roasted, and they were better. Wylde and I had a tent some fifty yards from the rest, and we were roasting them nearly all night. In the morning what was our surprise to find our teeth, which were quite black over night, as white as snow, and every one was the same—some peculiar acid I suppose.

Here we killed Hodgkinson's pony, and shall