A most useful article, I sent
Warri back for it, whilst Godfrey and I put in the day by following the
young warrior, who volunteered to show us a very large water - a ten-mile
walk with nothing at the end of it was not at all satisfactory, nor did
we feel very kindly disposed to our small friend. I suppose he wanted to
find his tribe again, for when we stopped we could see a smoke in the
distance.
We saw quite a number of spinifex rats, and though Godfrey carried a gun
one way and I carried it coming home, we never bagged one, and only had
one shot, which missed. Every rat got up quite 150 yards off in the most
annoying way. We started burning a patch of spinifex, but since we were
not pressed for food we concluded that the weather was quite hot enough
without making fires! I fancy that only by taking a leaf out of the
blackfellows' book could one have any success in spinifex-rat hunting. I
have read in Giles's book, and Sir John Forrest has told me, that when he
was in the bush the rats were easily secured. Possibly they were more
numerous in the better country that he passed through, or larger and not
so quick. All our efforts were unavailing, the only occasion on which we
slaughtered a rat being when Val caught a young one; the full-grown ones
were far too fast for her and too quick in turning round the hummocks of
spinifex.
Warri returned with the axe in the evening and reported that no natives
had visited the well since our departure. The next day as we approached
the hills the two boys, sitting aloft on the top of the loaded camels,
were much excited and made many signs that water was not far off. The
hills we found to be the usual barren, rocky tablelands, scoured into
gullies and gorges, which, forming small creeks, disappear before many
miles amongst the sandhills.
Mount Bannerman stands at the eastern end of the hills; a little to the
west is a deep and narrow gorge, the bed of which is strewn with great
boulders and slabs of rock. The hill is capped with a conglomerate of
quartz, sandstone and ironstone pebbles, some of the quartz fragments
being as large as hen's eggs and polished quite smooth. From its summit
an apparently high range can be seen to the North; to the East and South
nothing but sand-ridges; to the South-West a prominent square hill, the
highest point in a broken table-range, bears 226 degrees. This hill I
named Mount Erskine, after the Kennedy-Erskines of Dun.
Travelling West from Mount Bannerman, we had five miles of very rough and
jagged rocks to cross, worn away into a regular network of deep little
glens, very awkward to get over.
