As A Humble Tribute To The World-Wide Rejoicings Over The Long Reign Of
Our Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria, I Have Honoured This Hidden Well Of
Water By The Name Of "The Empress Spring." A More Appropriate Name It
Could Not Have, For Is It Not In The Great Victoria Desert?
And was it
not in that region that another party was saved by the happy finding of
Queen Victoria Spring?
The "Empress Spring" would be a hard spot to find. What landmarks there
are I will now describe. My position for the Spring is lat. 26 degrees 47
minutes 21 seconds S., long. 124 degrees 25 minutes E. Its probable
native name (I say probable because one can never be sure of words taken
from a wild aboriginal, who, though pointing out a water, may, instead of
repeating its name, be perhaps describing its size or shape) is
"Murcoolia Ayah Teenyah." The entrance is in a low outcrop of magnesian
limestone, surrounded by buckbush, a few low quondongs and a low,
broom-like shrub; beyond this, mulga scrub. Immediately to the North of
the outcrop runs a high sand-ridge, covered sparsely with acacia and
spinifex. On the top of the ridge are three conspicuously tall dead mulga
trees. From the ridge looking West, North, North-East, and East nothing
is visible but parallel sand-ridges running N.E. To the South-West can be
seen the high ground on which is the rock-hole (Mulundella).
To the South-East, across a mulga-covered flat, is a high ridge one mile
distant, with the crests of others visible beyond it; above them, about
twelve miles distant, a prominent bluff (Breaden Bluff), the North end of
a red tableland. From the mulga trees the bluff bears 144 degrees. One
and a half miles N.E. by N. from the cave is a valley of open spinifex,
breaking through the ridges in a West and Southerly direction, on which
are clumps of cork-bark trees; these would incline one to think that
water cannot be far below the surface in this spot.
Close to the entrance to the cave is erected a mulga pole, on which we
carved our initials and the date. There are also some native signs or
ornaments in the form of three small pyramids of stones and grass, about
eight feet apart, in a line pointing S.W.
Several old native camps were dotted about in the scrub; old fires and
very primitive shelters formed of a few branches. Amongst the ashes many
bones could be seen, particularly the lower maxillary of some species of
rat-kangaroo. To descend to the cave beneath, the natives had made a
rough ladder by leaning mulga poles against the edge of the entrance from
the floor. All down the passage to the water little heaps of ashes could
be seen where their fires had been placed to light them in their work.
Warri found some strange carved planks hidden away in the bushes, which
unfortunately we were unable to carry.
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