CHAPTER 2.10.  FROM 20TH APRIL TO 21ST MAY, 1874.

Gibson and I depart for the west. 
His brother with Franklin. 
Desert oaks. 
Smoked horse. 
Ants innumerable. 
Turn two horses back. 
Kegs in a tree. 
No views. 
Instinct of horses. 
Sight a distant range. 
Gibson’s horse dies. 
Give him the remaining one. 
The last ever seen of him. 
Alone in the desert. 
Carry a keg. 
Unconscious. 
Where is the relief party. 
A dying wallaby. 
Footfalls of a galloping horse. 
Reach the depot. 
Exhausted. 
Search for the lost. 
Gibson’s Desert. 
Another smoke-house. 
Jimmy attacked at Fort McKellar. 
Another equine victim. 
Final retreat decided upon. 
Marks of floods. 
Peculiarity of the climate. 
Remarks on the region. 
Three natives visit us.

(Illustration:  The circus.)

April 20th, 1874.

Gibson and I having got all the gear we required, took a week’s supply of smoked horse, and four excellent horses, two to ride, and two to carry water, all in fine condition.  I rode the Fair Maid of Perth, an excellent walker; I gave Gibson the big ambling horse, Badger, and we packed the big cob, a splendid bay horse and fine weight-carrier, with a pair of waterbags that contained twenty gallons at starting.  The other horse was Darkie, a fine, strong, nuggetty-black horse, who carried two five-gallon kegs of water and our stock of smoked horse, rugs, etc.  We reached the Circus, at twenty miles, early, and the horses had time to feed and fill themselves after being watered, though the grass was very poor.

21St April.

While I went for the horses Gibson topped up the water-bags and kegs, and poured a quantity of water out of the hole on to a shallow place, so that if we turned any horses back, they could drink without precipitating themselves into the deep and slippery hole when they returned here.  As we rode away, I remarked to Gibson that the day, was the anniversary of Burke and Wills’s return to their depot at Cooper’s Creek, and then recited to him, as he did not appear to know anything whatever about it, the hardships they endured, their desperate struggles for existence, and death there, and I casually remarked that Wills had a brother who also lost his life in the field of discovery.  He had gone out with Sir John Franklin in 1845.  Gibson then said, “Oh!  I had a brother who died with Franklin at the North Pole, and my father had a deal of trouble to get his pay from government.”  He seemed in a very jocular vein this morning, which was not often the case, for he was usually rather sulky, sometimes for days together, and he said, “How is it, that in all these exploring expeditions a lot of people go and die?” I said, “I don’t know, Gibson, how it is, but there are many dangers in exploring, besides accidents