What a time of misery and despair is this for the luckless proprietor! He sees before his eyes the thousands and tens of thousands of delicately woolled sheep, in whose breeding and multiplication he has taken so much pains,—on behalf of which he has studied treatises, and gone into all the history of the merino family since the days of ancient Spanish Cabanas, Infantados, Escurials, what not,—converted into a crowd of feeble skeletons, perishing in thousands before his eyes without hope or remedy, save in the advent of rain, which, as far as appearances go, may come next year or the year after that.

Is it possible to imagine a condition more melancholy, more hopeless, more calculated to drive to suicide the hapless victim of circumstances, beyond his—beyond any man's control? It has had the effect ere now. The torturing doubt, the hope deferred, has resulted in the dread, irrevocable step. And who can find it in his heart to condemn?

In a season like this, every one can realise the benefit of railways. How would these inland wastes be supplied were it not for the all-powerful steam-king? The dwellers hereabouts would scarcely have bread to eat; the necessaries of life would be enhanced in price; forage would be unattainable, except at prices which would resemble feeding them upon half-crowns. Talking to a teamster the other day about the signs of the times, I remarked that he and his comrades were compelled to carry quantities of forage with which to support their horses, while delivering loading.

'We'll have to carry a tank soon,' replied the tall, sun-bronzed Australian, 'if the season holds on this way. The water-holes are getting that low and choked up with dead stock as they're neither fit for man or beast to drink; and we lose horses too.'

'How is that?'

'Well, the heat, or the dust, or the rubbish in the chaff kills 'em. I can't rightly tell what it is; but these three teams lost five horses in one day—dropped down dead on that terrible hot Sunday.'

I did not wonder. There were the upstanding, well-conditioned Clydesdales walking along with their loads, gamely enough, but in a perfect cloud of dust. Above them the burning sun; around, the sandy, herbless waste. Different surroundings from those of the misty Northern Isles, from which their ancestors, near or remote, had come! Ponderous, heavy of hoof and hair, it seemed wonderful that they can do the work and travel the immense distances they do, under conditions so alien to their natural state. I inquired of their driver, himself an example of gradual adaptation to foreign habitude, whether the medium-sized, lighter-boned draught horses did not stand the eternal sun and drought better than their larger brethren. He thought they did. 'Wanted less food, and not so liable to inflammation or leg weariness.' I should be disposed to think that the Percheron horse, of which valuable breed several sires have lately been imported to Melbourne from Normandy, would be suitable for the long, hot, waggon journeys of the interior—a clean-limbed, active, spirited horse, immensely powerful for his size, easily kept, and more likely 'to come again' after exceptional fatigue. But I know from experience that the Australian horse in every class, from the Shetland pony to the Shire, is the strongest, most active, and most enduring animal that the world can show. And I hesitate in the assertion that by any other horse can he be profitably superseded.

As one traverses the arid waste, from time to time a whirlwind starts up within sight; a sand-pillar raises itself, contrasting strangely with the clear blue ether. Darkly smoke-coloured, furiously plunging about the base, it gradually fines off into the upper sky if you follow it sufficiently long.

'People doubt,' said the Eastern traveller to his guide, 'what produces those sand-pillars which so suddenly appear before us.'

'There is no doubt about the matter, praise be to Allah!' quoth the Bedouin. 'It is perfectly well known, say our holy men, that they are (Djinns) evil spirits.'