Dry Watercourses These, Except Immediately After
Rain; In Their Beds Are Found Native Wells Five To Ten Feet In Depth,
Sometimes holding water; on their banks, round the foot of the cliffs,
and on the flat where the creeks merge
Into the sand, grows long
grass - kangaroo-grass - and, in the winter magnificent herbage. Next we
find a dense thicket, and, this passed, we come again to open plains. And
thus sand-ridges now E. and W., now S.E. and N.W., now S.W. and N.E. (as
in the vicinity of Empress Spring), and now sandhills heaped up without
regularity, alternate with mulga thickets, open plains of spinifex, and
flat, timbered country. The most noticeable vegetation is of course
spinifex; as well as that, however, are several shrubs which form good
camel feed, such as ACACIA SALICINA, with its pretty, scented flower like
a little golden powder-puff; the quondong (FUSANUS ACUMINATUS), or
"native peach tree," a graceful little black-stemmed tree, against whose
fresh, green leaves the fruit, about the size of a cherry and of a
brilliant red, shows out with appetising clearness. Alas! it is a fraud
and delusion, for the stone forms more than three-quarters of the fruit,
leaving only a rather tasteless thick skin, which is invariably perforated
by small worms.
Dotted over the open plains the native poplar (CODONOCARPUS) stands
sentry, its head, top-heavy from the mass of seeds, drooping gracefully
to the setting sun; the prevalent wind at the present day would seem to
be from the E.N.E. Here, too, an occasional grass tree or "black-boy"
may be seen, and at intervals little clumps of what is locally termed
"mustard bush," so named from the strong flavour of the leaf; camels eat
this with voracity, of which fact one becomes very sensible when they
chew their cuds.
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