On the summit of the hill Forrest had raised a cairn of stones; this had been pulled down by the natives and subsequently replaced by Hubbe.  The blacks had again started to take it to pieces; I rebuilt what they had removed and placed on the cairn a board on which I wrote directions to the lagoon, in case any other traveller should pass.

By the side of the little creek to the North-West of the hill a bloodwood tree has been marked on one side with the number of Mills’s camp, and on the other with a record of the objects of Hubbe’s expedition, S.R. standing presumably for “Stock Route.”

The flat on which these trees are growing is, in my opinion, a very likely spot for finding water by sinking.

CHAPTER VII

THE GREAT UNDULATING DESERT OF GRAVEL

On August 22nd we left this kindly little oasis and directed our course to the North.  We were now nearly in the centre of the Colony, and had made enough easting, a general northerly course being necessary to take us through the heart of the great unknown.  It was my intention to steer due North for as long a period as possible, only deviating from it when forced by the exigencies of water-hunting, and when it became necessary, to bear somewhat to the eastward so as to hit off the vicinity of Hall’s Creek.  Unless absolutely forced to do so, I did not propose to make any deviation to the Westward—­for from our small caravan it was incumbent upon us to waste no time, unless we could do so in country where game was procurable.  So far, although our actual line of march had been through unmapped country, we had traversed a region already crossed by another party, whose route ran parallel to ours and some forty miles to the north.  Not that that was of the least benefit to us any more than if we had been at sea; but it gave us the feeling that we were not in an absolutely Terra incognita.  From the lagoon, however, our route lay through country untrodden by any white man, with the exception of Ernest Giles, whose track we should cross at right angles, about one hundred miles North of Alexander Spring.  But unless we sighted the Alfred and Marie Range, named by him, we should have no guide, excepting our position on the chart, to show us where we crossed the path of a caravan which marched through the wilderness twenty years before.

To give a description of the country that we now encountered, from day to day, would be so deadly monotonous that the kindest reader would hardly forgive me; and even if it could serve any useful purpose I should hesitate to recount the daily scene of solitude.  A general account of this country, followed by any incidents or personal adventures worthy of notice, will suffice to give an idea of this dreary region.