Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/47

 they should make for the nearest pastoral station of South Australia, which he had understood was at Mount Hopeless, about 150 miles to the southward, and accordingly they started in this direction the next day. Mindful of exploratory discipline, they place a note in the cache at the foot of the tree, stating their arrival, and their proposed route, and their inability, in their exhausted state, to make more than four or five miles a day. They also take the provisions left for them, but they do not deem it necessary to leave any external indications of their visit. Slowly they toil along in the new direction. Two of the six camels had survived hitherto, but they also sink early in these renewed labours. Their flesh is carefully preserved as a last addition to the scanty stock, but no water can be met with on the new route after they have turned off southward from the main bed of the Cooper. They struggled forward in vain hope, but were at last compelled to return. They believed they had made only about forty-five miles, but they were in reality much further on. " They decided to return at a point where, though they knew it not, scarce fifty miles remained to be accomplished, and just as Mount Hopeless would have appeared above the horizon, had they continued their route for even another day."