Had
They Been Easily Shot Their Small Numbers Would Hardly Have Made It Worth
While To Burden One's Self With A Gun; To See A Dozen In A Day Was
Counted Out Of The Common.
Birds were nowhere numerous - an occasional
eagle-hawk, or crow, and once or twice a little flock of long-tailed
parrots whose species was unknown to any of us.
Unfortunately I was
unable to procure a specimen. At any waters pigeons, sparrows, crows,
and hawks might be seen in fair quantities; and very rarely a turkey.
From the 22nd to the 24th we saw no signs of natives. On the latter day
several smokes rose during the march. So far, we had no certain knowledge
of the meaning of these smokes. They might be native signals, or from
fires for the purpose of burning off the old spinifex to allow young feed
to grow and so attract the rats to a known locality; or it might be that
the blacks were burning the country to hunt out the rats and lizards. On
the 25th a sudden change took place, and we found ourselves in a small,
open thicket with a coarse undergrowth of grass, and scattered about were
a few boulders of decomposed granite and occasional low outcrops of rock.
Several old native camps put us on the alert, and presently we found a
well - a shallow hole, 7 feet deep, and 2 feet 6 inches in diameter,
entirely surrounded by high spinifex. Why there should ever be water
there, or how the blacks got to know of it, was a problem we could only
guess at.
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