The heat was greater than that of the previous summer;
the thermometer ranging between 110 degrees and 123 degrees every day;
the wind blowing heavily from N.E. to E.S.E. filled the air with
impalpable red dust, giving the sun the most foreboding and lurid
appearance as we looked upon him. The ground was so heated that our
matches falling on it, ignited; and, having occasion to make a night
signal, I found the whole of our rockets had been rendered useless, as on
being lit they exploded at once without rising from the ground.
I had occasion--in the first volume of this work--to remark that I
should at a future period have to make some observations on the state of
the vegetation at this particular place; there being about a month or six
weeks difference between the periods of the year when we first arrived
at, and subsequently returned to it. When we first arrived on the 27th of
January, 1845, the cereal grasses had ripened their seed, and the larger
shrubs were fast maturing their fruit; the trees were full of birds, and
the plains were covered with pigeons--having nests under every bush. At
the close of November of the same year--that is to say six weeks
earlier--not an herb had sprung from the ground, not a bud had swelled,
and, where the season before the feathered tribes had swarmed in hundreds
on the creek, scarcely a bird was now to be seen.
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