The best recipe for avoiding cold is to sleep soundly; and to sleep soundly one must be tired.  As a rule night found us in this state, for we all discovered walking rather trying at first, none of us having done any for some time.  We were all pleased, I think, when our stage of seven or eight hours was finished—­especially Breaden, who had given himself a nasty strain in loading the camels, and who had a deal more weight to carry than we thin people.  Australian bushmen do not, as a rule, make good walkers—­their home has been the saddle.  It was the more necessary, therefore, that we should start on foot at once and carry out a system of training, in which I am a great believer; thus we never ate or drank between breakfast at daylight and tea at night—­from nine to eleven hours afterwards.  Stopping in the middle of the day wastes time, and entails the unloading of the camels or putting them down with their burdens on, a very bad plan; the time so spent at midday is far more valuable in the evening, when the camels can employ it by feeding.  Then again, a meal, really unnecessary, during the day soon makes an appreciable difference in the amount of provisions used.  Breaden and Godfrey consoled themselves with tobacco, but Charlie and I were not smokers.  I used to be, but gave up the practice because it made me so dry—­an effect that it does not have on every one, some finding that a smoke relieves not only hunger but thirst.  I have only one objection to a smoker as a travelling companion, and that is, that if by some horrible mishap he runs out of tobacco, he becomes quite unbearable.  The same holds with an excessive tea-drinker.  I was specially careful, therefore, to have a sufficient supply of these articles.  A large amount of tea was not required, since Godfrey was the only confirmed tea-drinker.

On July 15th we reached Menzies, having followed the telegraph line to that point.  And a very badly constructed line this is, the poles being timber and not sunk sufficiently deep into the ground—­a contract job.  The iron poles which are now used in the Government-constructed lines are a vast improvement.  Menzies was the last town we called at, and was not so specially inviting that we regretted leaving it.  Niagara, the next city, we avoided, and turned up the old Lake Darlot road, some fifteen miles to the west of it.  Between Menzies and Sandy Creek, close to where we turned, the open, saltbush plain which fringes the salt lake, Lake Prinsep, was looking quite charming, dotted all over with patches of splendid green and yellow herbage, plants like our clover and dandelion, and thousands of pink and white everlastings.  There can be no doubt that with a better rainfall or with some means of irrigation, could artesian water be found, a great part of the goldfields would be excellent pastoral land.  As it is, however, a few weeks suffice to again alter the face of the country to useless aridity.  We camped a day on Sandy Creek, to allow our beasts to enjoy, while they could, the luscious green feed; I embraced the opportunity of taking theodolite observations for practice.  The pool, some eighty yards long, and twenty wide, fringed with overhanging bushes and weeping willow with its orange-red berries, made a pretty picture; turkeys evidently came there to water, but we had not the luck to shoot any.