sending scouts in advance to search for water. This was seldom found, except in extremely sparse wells, which were used by the aborigines, and sometimes indicated by the smoke of their camps, but in hardly a single instance was direct information obtained from the blacks. The native wells in the sand not unusually indicated, rather than contained, water, and had often to be excavated to much greater depth. In this way, for the most part, was the desert crossed. When water was announced, an advance was made one stage further and a search party again sent out. It often happened that no water could lie found by the scouts after the most exhausting search, further progress being thus rendered impossible. In these cases there was no help for it but to change the direction, as far as their object would permit, and seek another tentative route. This was indescribably trying to their spirits, but the other alternative was to perish in the sand. On some few occasions the clouds came to their relief and burst in thunderstorms. Even when only a slight shower fell, a few buckets of water were secured by spreading a tarpaulin on the ground. On the 9th of May a deep glen was found in a range of hills. Here was an excellent supply of water, shaded by basalt rocks, rising to the height of 300 ft. Here, too, the weary wanderers rested for a few days, as also at Waterloo Wells, a little ahead, for which they had to pay a penalty in the permanent loss of four camels, which suddenly decamped. They were tracked for a hundred miles, but never recovered.
