From this point I returned.  The animal went so slowly that it was dusk when I got back to the Cup, where I observed, by the removal of several boughs, that natives had been here in my absence.  They had put a lot of boughs back into the hole again.  I had no doubt they were close to me now, and felt sure they were watching me and my movements with lynx-like glances from their dark metallic eyes.  I looked upon my miserable wretch of a horse as a safeguard from them.  He would not eat, but immediately hobbled off to the pit, and I was afraid he would jump in before I could stop him, he was so eager for drink.  It was an exceedingly difficult operation to get water out of this abominable hole, as the bucket could not be dipped into it, nor could I reach the frightful fluid at all without hanging my head down, with my legs stretched across the mouth of it, while I baled the foetid mixture into the bucket with one of my boots, as I had no other utensil.  What with the position I was in and the horrible odour which rose from the seething fluid, I was seized with violent retching.  The horse gulped down the first half of the bucket with avidity, but after that he would only sip at it, and I was glad enough to find that the one bucketful I had baled out of the pit was sufficient.  I don’t think any consideration would have induced me to bale out another.

Having had but little sleep, I rode away at three o’clock next morning.  The horse looked wretched and went worse.  It was past midday when I had gone twenty miles, when, entering sandhill country, I was afraid he would knock up altogether.  After an hour and a half’s rest he seemed better; he walked away almost briskly, and we reached the water-bag much earlier than I expected.  Here we both had a good drink, although he would have emptied the bag three times over if he could have got it.  The day had been hot.

When I left this singular watercourse, where plenty of water existed in its upper portions, but was either too bitter or too salt for use, I named it Elder’s Creek.  The other that joins it I called Hughes’s Creek, and the range in which they exist the Colonel’s Range.

There was not much water left for the horse.  He was standing close to the bag for some hours before daylight.  He drank it up and away we went, having forty miles to go.  I arrived very late.  Everything was well except the water supply, and that was gradually ceasing.  In a week there will be none.  The day had been pleasant and cool.

Several more days were spent here, re-digging and enlarging the old tank and trying to find a new.  Gibson and I went to some hills to the south, with a rampart-like face.  The place swarmed with pigeons, but we could find no water.  We could hear the birds crooning and cooing in all directions as we rode, “like the moan of doves in immemorial elms, and the murmurings of innumerable bees.”  This rampart-like ridge was festooned with cypress pines, and had there been water there, I should have