All Through Cliffs And Bluffs Are
Met With, From Which Small Creeks Ending In A Grassy Avenue Run; And, As
Lake Wells Is Approached, Table-Topped Hills And Low Ranges Occur, And
Occasional Flats Of Salt-Bush Country.
We had no longer any difficulty
with regard to water, the rain having left frequent puddles where any
rocky or clayey ground was crossed.
In the sand no water could be seen;
indeed we had a sharp shower one morning, water was running down the
slopes of sand, but half an hour afterwards no sign of it could be seen
on the surface. On the 23rd we sighted, and steered for, a very prominent
headland in a gap in a long range of cliffs. Sandhills abut right on to
them, and dense scrub surrounds their foot. The headland, which I named
Point Robert, after my brother, is of sandstone, and stands squarely and
steep-cliffed above a stony slope of what resembles nothing so much as a
huge heap of broken crockery.
We camped at the head of a little gorge that night, having found a rocky
pool; the rain cleared off, out came the stars, and a sharp frost
followed, the first of the year. The character of the country was
extraordinarily patchy; after crossing ridges of sand, and then an open,
stony plain, on the 25th we camped on a little flat of salt-bush and
grass. Our position was lat. 26 degrees 20 minutes, long. 123 degrees 23
minutes, and seven miles to the North-West a flat-topped hill, at the end
of a range, stood out noticeably above the horizon of scrub; this I named
Mount Lancelot, after another brother. The next day it rained again,
making the ground soft and slippery. In the evening, to our surprise and
disgust, further passage that day was cut off by a salt swamp. Not
wishing to get fixed in a lake during rain, we camped early, pitched our
tent and hoped for the rain to stop - an unholy wish in this country, but
salt-lakes are bad enough without rain! The next two days were spent in
trying to find a crossing, for we found ourselves confronted by a series
of swamps, samphire flats, and lake channels running away to the North as
far as could be seen by field-glasses - a chain of lakes, hemmed in by
sandhills, an unmarked arm of Lake Wells. If we could not cross here we
might have to go seventy miles out of our way, round the South of Lake
Wells, and then back to the Bonython.
CHAPTER IX
ACROSS LAKE WELLS TO LAKE DARLOT
Four attempted crossings ended in the hopeless bogging of horses and
camels, entailing the carrying of loads and saddles. At last we could not
get them to face the task at all; and small wonder, for floundering about
in soft, sticky mud is at least unpleasant! I am pretty confident that we
could have managed to get the camels through somehow, but the horses were
far too weak to struggle.
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