Thankful For Small Mercies, I Made The Best Of A Bad Job, And,
Having No Dish Or Bucket From Which
To give Satan a drink, I was obliged
to make him lie down close to the narrow hole, whilst into
His willing
throat I poured the water which at arm's length I scooped up with my
quart pot. This tedious process finished, I still had a potful at my
disposal, so, taking a long drink myself, I stripped off my clothes and
indulged in a shower bath, Not a luxurious bathe certainly, and a larger
supply would have been acceptable, but every little helps, and even a few
drops of fresh water have a pleasant effect on one's body made sticky by
the salt of the water from the lakes, and serve to remind the traveller
that he has once been clean.
Leaving the rock at sundown I travelled well into the night, for progress
was slow through the scrub and trees in the darkness, but little relieved
by the light of a waning moon. Feeling sure that I had gone far enough,
I was preparing to rest awhile and find our camp in the morning, when the
welcome glow of a fire shot up through the branches. Jim and Paddy, with
characteristic thought and resource, had climbed to the top of two tall
and dead gum trees and there built fires, fanned by the fierce draught
through the hollow trunks, knowing well at what a short distance a fire on
the ground is visible in this flat country. During my absence they had
found no gold, but, as they liked the look of the country, we decided to
return to our condensers for a fresh supply of water. Having obtained
this, Egan and I revisited our previous prospecting ground, leaving Jim
behind to "cook" water against our return; and a more uninteresting
occupation I cannot well picture. Camped alone on a spit of sand,
surrounded by a flat expanse of mud, broiled by the sun, half blinded by
the glare of the salt, with no shade but a blanket thrown over a rough
screen of branches, and nothing to do but to stoke up the fires, change
the water in the cooling-trough, and blow off the salt from the bottom of
the boilers, he was hardly to be envied. Yet Jim cheerfully undertook the
job and greeted us on our return, after four days, with the smiling remark
that his work had been varied by the necessity of plugging up the bottom
of one of the boilers which had burned through, with a compound (a patent
of his own) formed from strips of his shirt soaked in a stiff paste of
flour. That night we were astonished by the passage of a flight of ducks
over our heads, which Egan saw, and I and Conley heard distinctly.
A detailed account of our wanderings would be as wearying to the reader as
they were to ourselves, a mere monotonous repetition of cooking water and
hunting for "colours" which we never found. Christmas Eve, 1894, saw us in
the vicinity of Mount Monger, where a few men were working on an alluvial
patch and getting a little gold. A lucky storm had filled a deep clay-hole
on the flat running north-west from the hills, and here we were at last
enabled to give the camels a cheap drink; for over six weeks we had not
seen a drop of fresh water beyond what, with infinite labour, we had
condensed, with the one exception of the small rock-hole I found at
Cowarna. My entry in my journal for Christmas Day is short and sweet:
"Xmas Day, 1894. Wash clothes. Write diary. Plot course." We had no
Christmas fare to make our hearts glad and but for the fortunate arrival
of my old friend David Wilson, who gave us a couple of packets of
cornflour, would have had a scanty feast indeed.
Even in the remote little mining camp Santa Claus did not forget us, and
spread his presents, in the form of a deluge of rain, on all alike. What a
pleasant change to get thoroughly wet through! The storm hardly lasted
twenty minutes, but such was its violence that every little creek and
watercourse was soon running, and water for weeks to come was secured and
plentiful in all directions; but so local is a summer storm that five
miles from the camp, no water or signs of rain were to be seen. Our
provisions being finished, nothing remained but to make all speed for
Coolgardie, some fifty miles distant by road. Unencumbered by the
condensers, which were abandoned as useless since the bottom of both
boilers had burned through, we made fair time, reaching a good
camping-ground two miles from the town on the evening of the second day,
the 30th of December.
CHAPTER III
A FRESH START
Four days sufficed to make preparations for another trip, to hear and read
the news, and write letters. My first, of course, was to my Syndicate, to
report our past movements and future plans, and how I intended making
northward, hoping that change of direction would change our luck.
January 4th we set out with the same three camels, and rations for three
months. My plan was first to revisit some known good country to the south
of Hannan's, and, if unsuccessful, to travel from that point in a more or
less north-north-west direction, and so follow, instead of crossing, the
trend of the various formations; for in travelling from east to west, or
VICE VERSA, one crosses a succession of parallel belts, first a
sand-plain, then a ridge of granite, next a timbered flat, then a stretch
of auriferous country, with possibly a belt of flat salt-lake country on
either side. Since these parallel belts run nearly north-north-west, it
seemed to the mind of the untrained geologist that by starting in a known
auriferous zone, and travelling along it in a north-north-west direction,
the chances of being all the time in auriferous country would be
increased, and the plan worth trying.
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