Rain falls, and within a few hours the air will be
filled with the croaking of frogs and the cackling of ducks.* To my mind
it is one of the most incomprehensible things in Nature that wildfowl
(for not only ducks, but sometimes swans and geese are seen) know when and
where rain has fallen.
[* Sir John Forrest, in his exploration of 1874, found ducks, geese, and
swans on Lake Augusta - a salt lake in the arid interior, five hundred
miles from the coast.]
But, stranger still, how do they know it is going to fall? That they would
seem to do so the following will go to show. Whilst we were condensing on
Lake Lapage, one moonlight night we saw a flight of ducks fly over us to
the northward. No surface water then existed anywhere near us. This was on
December 16th. No rain fell in the district until December 25th, but I
ascertained afterwards that rain fell at Lake Carey, one hundred miles
north of Lake Lapage about the same date that we had seen the ducks. The
exact date I am not sure of, but in any case the ducks either foresaw the
rain or knew that rain had fallen at least two hundred miles away; for
they must have come from water (and at that season there was no surface
water within one hundred miles of us) and probably from the coast. In
either case, I think it is an extremely interesting fact, and however they
arrive the ducks are a welcome addition to the prospector's "tucker-bags."
CHAPTER IV
A CAMEL FIGHT
Leaving Hannan's on our left, we continued our northerly course, over flat
country timbered with the usual gum-forest, until we reached the
auriferous country in which our camp had been robbed by the blacks;
nothing of interest occurring until January 17th, when we found ourselves
without water. Knowing that we must soon strike the road from Broad Arrow
to Mount Margaret, this gave us no anxiety, and, beyond the necessity of
travelling without having had a drink for eighteen hours, but little
discomfort.
We struck the road as expected, and, following it some five miles, came to
a small, dry creek running down from a broken range of granite. Sinking in
its bed, we got a plentiful supply. Mosquitoes are very rarely found in
the interior, but on this little creek they swarmed, and could only be
kept away by fires of sticks and grass, in the smoke of which we slept.
From the granite hills a fine view to the eastward was obtained, across a
rich little plain of saltbush and grass, and dotted here and there over it
was a native peach tree, or "quondong," a species of sandalwood.
