Our Rate Of Travel Over The Gravel Was A Small Fraction More Than Two
Miles Per Hour.
This I carefully reckoned by timing, taking into account
every halt of ever so small a duration in our march in a due North line
between two latitudes.
In lat. 23 degrees 34 minutes, long. 125 degrees 16 minutes, there rose
before us, visible for several miles, high banks of stones, such as one
sees on either side of the old bed of a river which has altered its
course. The slopes were covered with spinifex and on the top red and
weeping mulga - the latter a graceful little tree, whose bowed head adds
little to the gaiety of one's surroundings. I cannot offer any
explanation of these curious banks, except that, from the appearance of
one or two large flat boulders on the summit, it may be that they were
formed by the entire disintegration of a sandstone cliff, to which decay
has come sooner than to its neighbours further South. Future experience
showed us that further North the gravel becomes small and smaller until
it disappears, the rolling sandhills giving place to regular ridges. If
this is the case viz., that the hills and ranges are gradually rotting
away until they disappear, leaving only gravel behind, which, in its
turn, decays and decays until only sand remains, then in the course of
ages the whole of this region will be covered with ridge upon ridge of
sand formed by the wind, whose powers so far have been checked by the
weight of the gravel. For the sake of future generations I hope my
reasoning is incorrect.
As I stood on the stony bank, I could see several native smokes to the
eastward. Determined to take advantage of any help extended to us by
Nature, to spare no pains in the all-important matter of finding water,
to let nothing pass that might assist us on our way, so that if it was
our fate to go under in the struggle I should not be assailed by the
thought that I had neglected opportunities, determined, in fact, always
to act for the best, so far as I could see it, I decided to make use of
this sign of the presence of natives, and altered our course in
consequence. We started due East and held on that course for eight miles,
Godfrey and Charlie lighting the spinifex at intervals. Some men have a
theory that the blacks signal by smokes, the appearance of which they
vary by using different grasses, branches, or leaves. That may be the
case in some parts; here, anyway, they are no more than hunting-fires, as
we later proved. If the desert blacks do go in for smoke-telegraphy they
must on this occasion have thought that the operator at our end of the
wire was mad! Perhaps unknowingly we sent up smokes which appeared to
them to be rational messages! If such was the case our signals could not
have meant "Please stay at home," for when eventually we did find their
camp they had left.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 124 of 244
Words from 64160 to 64679
of 127189
