Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/90

 But both horse and camel alike proved useful in other ways less premeditated. Necessity cures many prejudices, and hunger is a sauce to reconcile us to a very miscellaneous diet. As the stock diminished, and as the appetite increased, even horse-flesh proved no unsavoury morsel, lean, tough, and jaded as it too often was. Horse after horse fell under the "jerking" process, consisting of cutting the flesh into long strips, to be dried in the sun. The camel, too, took his turn under the knife, and our travellers were ever far more anxious to secure an adequate quantity than to differ about the quality of their fare. Only once was the case otherwise, when one of the camels, "old and worn out, with sores all over him," was doomed to the knife and the jerking. Refractory even in the pot, the tough liver and kidneys defy the teeth of the hungry travellers, and the cook is enabled to boast for once on the journey that there was superfluity on the board.

TRIBUTES TO THE EXPLORERS.

The Australian colonies may well be congratulated not only upon their taking upon themselves the entire cost and management of the exploration of this part of the empire, but upon the vigour with which they are prosecuting their exploratory duties—a vigour that promises ere long to make the whole of Australia about as