The near approach of midsummer, and the known scarcity of water, had induced me to include in my equipment a portable condenser, by means of which we should convert the brine of the salt lakes into water fit to drink.  It seemed an excellent plan and so simple, for lakes abound—­on the maps; and wherever a lake is, there, by digging, will water be found, and thus we should be independent of rock-holes and other precarious sources of supply.  Plans so simple on paper do not always “pan out” as confidently expected and a more odious job, or one which entailed more hard work, than prospecting with condensers I have not had to undertake.  “Prospecting” is generally taken to mean searching for gold.  In Western Australia in the hot weather it resolves itself into a continual battle for water, with the very unlikely contingency that, in the hunt for a drink, one may fall up against a nugget of gold or a gold-bearing quartz reef.

On November 10th we made a start from Coolgardie, and, travelling along the Twenty-five Mile road for some fifteen miles, we branched off in an easterly direction, to try some country where I had previously found “colours” of gold, when journeying from Kurnalpi to the Twenty-five Mile.  Finding that in the meantime others had been there and pegged out leases and claims, we passed on and set up our condensers on the “Wind and Water” lake, and began to get an inkling that our job was not to be of the pleasantest.

More than one hole six to fifteen feet deep had to be sunk before we struck any water.  To lessen the labour we at first dug our shafts near the margin of the lake; this proving unsuccessful we were forced further and further out, until our efforts were rewarded by a plentiful supply, but alas! some three hundred yards from the shore.  This necessitated the carrying of wood from the margin of the lake to the condensers.  The boilers required constant attention day and night, the fires had to be stoked, and the water stored as it slowly trickled from the cooling tray.  Thus the duties of the twenty-four hours consisted in chopping and carrying wood, watching the condensers, attending to the camels, occasionally sleeping and eating, and prospecting for gold in spare time.  I think my readers will readily understand that it was hard indeed to find much time to devote to the proper object of the expedition, however willing we were to do so.

There were one or two others engaged on the same job at that lake, and from one party Czar sneaked a cheap drink by thrusting his head through the opening in the lid of a large two-hundred-gallon tank.  His peculiar position was specially adapted to the administration of a sound beating, nor did the infuriated owner of the water fail to take advantage of the situation.