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.
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