Not Only Are Indian Camels
Smaller And Less Fitted For The Heavy Work Of The Interior, But Their
Liability, Until Acclimatised, To Mange And Other Diseases Makes Them Most
Undesirable Acquisitions.
The near approach of midsummer, and the known scarcity of water, had
induced me to include in my equipment a portable condenser, by means of
which we should convert the brine of the salt lakes into water fit to
drink.
It seemed an excellent plan and so simple, for lakes abound - on
the maps; and wherever a lake is, there, by digging, will water be found,
and thus we should be independent of rock-holes and other precarious
sources of supply. Plans so simple on paper do not always "pan out" as
confidently expected and a more odious job, or one which entailed more
hard work, than prospecting with condensers I have not had to undertake.
"Prospecting" is generally taken to mean searching for gold. In Western
Australia in the hot weather it resolves itself into a continual battle
for water, with the very unlikely contingency that, in the hunt for a
drink, one may fall up against a nugget of gold or a gold-bearing quartz
reef.
On November 10th we made a start from Coolgardie, and, travelling along
the Twenty-five Mile road for some fifteen miles, we branched off in an
easterly direction, to try some country where I had previously found
"colours" of gold, when journeying from Kurnalpi to the Twenty-five Mile.
Finding that in the meantime others had been there and pegged out leases
and claims, we passed on and set up our condensers on the "Wind and Water"
lake, and began to get an inkling that our job was not to be of the
pleasantest.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 70 of 468
Words from 19365 to 19657
of 127189
