Close to it also, on a sloping bank, there was another more than half finished hut from which the natives could only just have retreated, for they had left all their worldly goods behind them; thus it appeared we had scared these poor people a second time from their work.

I was really sorry for the trouble we had unintentionally given them, and in order to make up for it, I fastened my own knife with a glittering blade, to the top of a spear that stood upright in front of the hut; not without hopes that the owner of the weapon seeing we intended them no harm, would come to us on our return from the hills.
Below this water-hole the creek sensibly diminished.

Crossing and abandoning it we struck away to the N.W.At about half a mile we entered the scrub, which had indeed commenced from the water, but which at that distance became thick.

We were then in a perfect desert, from the scrub we got on barren sandy flats, bounded at first by sandy ridges at some little distance from each other, but the formation soon changed, and the sand ridges succeeded each other like waves of the sea.

We had no sooner descended one than we were ascending another, and the excessive heat of so confined a place oppressed us greatly.