April 30th And May 1st Were Occupied In Digging Out The Sand And
Collecting What Water We Could, A Matter Of Five Or Six Gallons.
So bad
was this water that the camels would not touch it; however, it made
excellent bread, and passable tea.
Man, recognising Necessity, is less
fastidious than animals who look to their masters to supply them with the
best, and cannot realise that in such cases "Whatever is, is best."
From a broken granite rock North-West of the rock-hole, we sighted
numerous peaks to the North, and knew that Mount Shenton could not now be
far away. To the East of the rock-hole is a very prominent bluff some
fifteen miles distant; this I named Mount Fleming, after Colonel Fleming,
then Commandant of the West Australian forces.
May 2nd we reached the hills and rejoiced to find ourselves once more in
decent country. Numerous small, dry watercourses ran down from the hills,
fringed with grass and bushes. In the open mulga, kangaroos' tracks were
numerous, and in the hills we saw several small red kangaroos, dingoes,
and emus. At first we found great difficulty in identifying any of the
hills; but after much consultation and reference to the map we at last
picked out Mount Shenton, and on reaching the hill knew that we were
right, for we found Wells' cairn of stones and the marks of his camp and
camels. The next difficulty was in finding the soakage, as from a bad
reproduction of Wells' map it was impossible to determine whether the soak
was at the foot of Mount Shenton or near another hill three miles away.
It only remained to search both localities.
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