I Can Imagine Any One, On Being Suddenly Placed On Rising Ground With A
Vast Plain Of Waving Spinifex Spreading Before Him - A Plain Relieved
Occasionally By The Stately Desert Oak, Solemn, White, And
Mysterious - Saying, "Ah!
What a charming view - how beautiful that rolling
plain of grass!
Its level surface broken by that bold sandhill, fiery-red
in the blaze of sun!" But when day after day, week after week, and month
after month must be passed always surrounded by the hateful plant, one's
sense of the picturesque becomes sadly blunted.
This was our first introduction to the desert and, though a little
monotonous, it seemed quite pleasant, and indeed was so, when compared
to the heartrending country met with later in our journey.
The sand has been formed (blown, I suppose) into irregular ridges,
running more or less parallel, but in no one fixed direction. From the
edge of the desert to Mount Worsnop, a distance of nearly two hundred
miles in a straight line, the country presented the same appearance.
First a belt, eight to ten miles wide, of sand-ridges from thirty to
fifty feet high, with a general direction of E. by S. and W. by N.; then
a broad sand-flat of equal breadth, either timbered with desert gums, or
open and covered with spinifex breast-high, looking in the distance like
a field of ripe corn; next another series of ridges with a S.E. and N.W.
direction; then, with startling suddenness, a small oasis, enclosed or
nearly surrounded by sheer broken cliffs of desert sandstone, from which
little creeks run out into the sand, winding their way for a mile or two
between the ridges.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 184 of 468
Words from 50405 to 50688
of 127189
