. . A Strong Easterly Wind Prevailed, Blowing Up Clouds Of Sand And Ashes From The Burnt Ground.

Truly this is a desert!"

This was written when I was two and a half years old. The writer little thought that an infant was growing up who would have no more sense than to revisit this ghastly region; nor as far as I remember was the infant thinking much about sand! Dear me! how easy it was to get a drink in those days - merely by yelling for it - but the strongest lungs in the world cannot dig out a native well.

CHAPTER V

STANSMORE RANGE TO LAKE MACDONALD

Shaping our course from the lake (Lake White) towards the highest point in the range, which I named Stansmore Range after poor Charlie, we had the novel and pleasant experience of travelling with, instead of across, the ridges - if only we could have turned the country round at right angles, or changed the North point of the compass, how nice it would have been! As it was, South we must go to get home, and take the ridges as they came; our Westerly course was only temporary. For twenty-seven miles we steered W.b.S., keeping along the trough of two ridges the whole time, seeing nothing on either hand but a high bank of sand covered with the usual vegetation. The trough was flat at the bottom, and about 150 yards wide. For ten miles we travelled between the same two parallel ridges, then in front the butt-end of another appeared, as the trough widened out. Deviating slightly to the South from our former course, we were again between two ridges, one of which was the same that we had followed along before. Then, again, in a few miles another ridge would start, and altering our course again, this time a little to the North, continued our march between two fresh ridges, and so on. Thus it will be seen that the ridges, though apparently parallel, are not accurately so, and that one may be continuous for more than ten miles or so, when it ends and another takes its place.

On our march our captives cleverly caught a spinifex rat and a snake (one of the very few that we saw); they greedily devoured both, and were much pleased when Godfrey refused to partake of a piece of half-raw snake which they politely offered him. We discovered that they had a great liking for our beef-water - that is, the water in which our salt beef had been cooked - and made no bones about swallowing a couple of gallons of this brine-like soup. It had one good effect, for it made them most anxious to take us to water the next morning! The hills we found to be of the usual character, barren sandstone, from which numerous rocky creeks have torn their way through the sand. Following up a little glen, terribly rough and steep for the camels, we came at length to a fine pool, hemmed in by almost sheer cliffs sixty feet high.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 212 of 244
Words from 110229 to 110745 of 127189