During The Day's March He
Was Up To All Kinds Of Pranks, Going Through All Sorts Of Antics,
Idiotic, Sorrowful, Angry, And Vulgar In Turn.
The space between the
ridges was greater now, and on them were numerous pointed ant-hills
some two or three feet high.
One favourite trick of this lunatic
was to rush towards one of these, and sit perched on the top with
his knees up and feet resting on the side of the heap, a most
uncomfortable position. Another dodge he tried with indifferent success
was that of throwing himself under a camel as he passed, with the object,
I suppose, of diving out on the other side. The camel, however, did not
understand the game and kicked him severely. He was a most extraordinary
person, and indeed I can understand any one going mad in this dreary
region; and to think that these black folk have never known anything
different!
I could enumerate a score of strange tricks that our friend exhibited.
What surprised me most was to see him make use, in unmistakable
pantomime, of a vulgar expression that I thought was only known to
English schoolboys!
Between the Forebank Hills and the tablelands we were now approaching is
an open plain of spinifex some ten miles wide, bounded on North and South
by sand-ridges. From these in the morning the long line of broken
tablelands could be seen ahead of us, and running for a considerable
distance to the eastward. The highest point of those more immediately to
our front I named Mount Fothringham, after my cousin. The headland for
which we were steering was too far off to be reached that night, so we
camped on a ridge, and during the night noticed a small fire in the hills
ahead. It could only be a camp-fire of some natives, so, noting its
direction, and being unable to see anything further, we retired to rest.
The next morning, with the help of the glasses, we could see several
black figures moving about on the sloping foot of the cliffs, and
therefore steered in their direction. Our mad friend had to be
accommodated on the top of a camel, as he refused to walk or move, and I
wished to leave him with friends, or at any rate with fellow-countrymen,
though we no longer required his services as guide, in which
capacity he had been singularly useless. Five miles brought us to the
hills, and close on to the natives' camp whose fire we had seen, before
they discovered us; when they did so they fled, seven or eight of them,
and hid in caves in the sandstone. We had now been only four days since
the last water, but the weather was so hot, feed so scarce, and so much
ground burnt and dusty, that it was time we gave the camels another drink
if we wished to keep them in any sort of condition. From the native camp
a few tracks led round a corner of rock; these I followed, with the
camels coming behind, and soon saw two small native wells sunk in the
sand and debris, held in a cleft in the rock.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 158 of 244
Words from 82013 to 82549
of 127189
