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But the passions are the same in all phases of the life of the human family, the two great master motives, of love and hunger, being the mainspring of all the actions of mankind. Wynbring was now behind us, and Jimmy once more our guide, philosopher, and friend.
Jimmy was mounted on an old black horse, that was a fine ambler, the one that bolted away with the load of water the first night we started from Youldeh. He had not stood the journey from Youldeh at all well; the other two were quite fresh and hearty when we left Wynbring. By the evening of the 2nd we had made only twenty-two miles.
After a few minutes' gazing about, he would descend, mount his horse, and go off on some new line, and in the course of a mile or so he would stop at a tree, and tell us that when a little boy he got a 'possum out of a hole which existed in it. At another place he said his mother was bitten by a wild dog, which she was digging out of a hole in the ground; and thus we came to Wynbring at last.
On the following day, the old horse Jimmy was riding completely gave in from the heat and thirst and fearful nature of the country we were traversing, having come only sixty-five miles from Wynbring. We could neither lead, ride, nor drive him any farther.
We had made an average travelling of twenty-eight miles a day from Wynbring, until this eighth day, when we came to the water in twenty-four miles, thus making it 220 miles in all. I could not sufficiently admire and praise the wonderful powers of these extraordinary, and to me entirely new animals.
It looked high and rugged, and I thought to find water in some rock-hole or crevice about it. Leave Wynbring. The horses. Mountains of sand. Mount Finke. One horse succumbs. Torchlight tracking. Trouble with the camels. A low mount. Dry salt lagoons. 200 miles yet from water. Hope. Death of Chester. The last horse. A steede, a steede. Ships of the desert. Reflections at night. Death or Water.
Next day we passed another little spot called Yanderby, with rock water, at ten miles; thence in three more we came to Mobing, a much better place than any of the others: indeed I thought it superior to Wynbring.
Proceeding towards the next watering-place, which old Jimmy said was close up, in a rather more northerly direction, we found it was getting late, as we had not left Wynbring until after midday; we therefore had to encamp in the scrubs, having come about fifteen miles. It is next to impossible to make an old fool of a black fellow understand the value of the economy of time.
Pale-green-foliaged tree. A lost officer. Camels poisoned. Mount Finke in the winter. Wynbring. A new route. A good Mussulman. Depart from Wynbring. New places. Antediluvian cisterns. Still westwards. Lake Bring. Rain and a bath. A line cut in the scrubs. High sandhills. Return to Youldeh. Waking dreams. In depot. Fowler's Bay once more. The officers explore to the north. Jimmy and Tommy.
I don't know what he would have thought had he been in my case, with his matchless "steede" dead, and in the pangs of thirst himself, his "sworde of metal keane" a useless encumbrance, 168 miles from the last water, and not knowing where the next might be; he would have to admit that the wonderful beasts which now alone remained to us were by no means to be accounted "meane," for these patient and enduring creatures, which were still alive, had tasted no water since leaving Wynbring, and, though the horses were dead and gone, stood up with undiminished powers appearing to be as well able now to continue on and traverse this wide-spread desert as when they left the last oasis behind.
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