We had no longer any difficulty with regard to water, the rain having left frequent puddles where any rocky or clayey ground was crossed.  In the sand no water could be seen; indeed we had a sharp shower one morning, water was running down the slopes of sand, but half an hour afterwards no sign of it could be seen on the surface.  On the 23rd we sighted, and steered for, a very prominent headland in a gap in a long range of cliffs.  Sandhills abut right on to them, and dense scrub surrounds their foot.  The headland, which I named Point Robert, after my brother, is of sandstone, and stands squarely and steep-cliffed above a stony slope of what resembles nothing so much as a huge heap of broken crockery.

We camped at the head of a little gorge that night, having found a rocky pool; the rain cleared off, out came the stars, and a sharp frost followed, the first of the year.  The character of the country was extraordinarily patchy; after crossing ridges of sand, and then an open, stony plain, on the 25th we camped on a little flat of salt-bush and grass.  Our position was lat. 26 degrees 20 minutes, long. 123 degrees 23 minutes, and seven miles to the North-West a flat-topped hill, at the end of a range, stood out noticeably above the horizon of scrub; this I named Mount Lancelot, after another brother.  The next day it rained again, making the ground soft and slippery.  In the evening, to our surprise and disgust, further passage that day was cut off by a salt swamp.  Not wishing to get fixed in a lake during rain, we camped early, pitched our tent and hoped for the rain to stop—­an unholy wish in this country, but salt-lakes are bad enough without rain!  The next two days were spent in trying to find a crossing, for we found ourselves confronted by a series of swamps, samphire flats, and lake channels running away to the North as far as could be seen by field-glasses—­a chain of lakes, hemmed in by sandhills, an unmarked arm of Lake Wells.  If we could not cross here we might have to go seventy miles out of our way, round the South of Lake Wells, and then back to the Bonython.

CHAPTER IX

ACROSS LAKE WELLS TO LAKE DARLOT

Four attempted crossings ended in the hopeless bogging of horses and camels, entailing the carrying of loads and saddles.  At last we could not get them to face the task at all; and small wonder, for floundering about in soft, sticky mud is at least unpleasant!  I am pretty confident that we could have managed to get the camels through somehow, but the horses were far too weak to struggle.  Poor old Highlander sank to his belly, struggled for a minute just long enough to get further engulfed, and then threw up the sponge and lay panting until we came to his rescue.  We had a job to get him to the shore, and only succeeded by digging out two legs on one side, putting a rope round them, then the same on the other, and by violent efforts dragged him on to his side.  Then, one at his head and the rest on his legs, we turned him over and over until we came on firmer ground, when we put the ropes on his legs again and by main force hauled him on his flank to the margin of the lake, where he lay half dead.  The others fared but little better; it was evident that a crossing could not be effected except at the cost of the horses.