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SKETCHES IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA.

has been running wildly together. A dropped hip is no great disfigurement to an animal, nor does it tend very greatly to his prejudice unless he has had a very long gallop, or a very hard day's work, when the leg which has been hurt is apt to give way of a sudden and bring him down as if he had been shot.

We resumed our journey after waiting another night at the inn, thinking that we had thus given our horse sufficient rest, forgetting that, in addition to the exercise he had taken for his own pleasure, Khourabene, with a native's love for a gallop, was certain to have ridden him back at no slower pace, so that we must therefore be prepared for a downfall. Accordingly, when within a few miles of our journey's end and providentially at a very sandy place, without the least warning the dropped hip failed, and we were both thrown out of the dog-cart so instantaneously, that I could not help wishing it had been possible for us to have been spectators of our own speedy ejection as well as actors in it.

Our joy at finding each other unhurt was changed in a moment into a feeling of sad dilemma, as we beheld our poor horse lying on the ground like one completely flattened out on the road; it was, moreover, impossible to raise him except by first getting him out of the traces, and since he had fallen in such a position as to prevent these being unbuckled, it was evident that, if we could not cut him out of his harness, he would be obliged, like other over-worked creatures, to die in it.

Before leaving England my husband had received, as a parting gift from a relation, a knife which was supposed