We passed hollow after hollow that had successively dried up, although originally of considerable depth; and, when we at length found water, it was doubtful how far we could make use of it.
Sometimes in boiling it left a sediment nearly equal to half its body; at other times it was so bitter as to be quite unpalatable.

That on which we subsisted was scraped up from small puddles, heated by the sun's rays; and so uncertain were we of finding water at the end of the day's journey, that we were obliged to carry a supply on one of the bullocks.

There was scarcely a living creature, even of the feathered race, to be seen to break the stillness of the forest.

The native dogs alone wandered about, though they had scarcely strength to avoid us; and their melancholy howl, breaking in upon the ear at the dead of the night, only served to impress more fully on the mind the absolute loneliness of the desert.
It appeared, from their traces that the natives had lingered on this ground, on which they had perhaps been born, as long as it continued to afford them a scanty though precarious subsistence; but that they had at length been forced from it.

Neither fish nor muscles remained in the creek, nor emus nor kangaroos on the plains.