He Showed Us Their Well, Which Was Nearly Dry, And Then Volunteered To
Lead Us To Others; And Away He
Went, swaggering along and clicking his
tongue in great glee, occasionally breaking out into shrieks of laughter.
When we arrived
At one dry rock-hole and then another, it dawned upon me
what the secret joke had been that so amused our friend; and I determined
that he should be of some use to us before we parted company.
Of these dry rock-holes, one would, after rain, hold a fair amount of
water, and is situated on the shoulder between two low table-tops. To the
South, about two miles distant, are three conspicuous conical hills,
close together, and about the same distance to the North-West a hill that
at once calls to mind an old fort or castle. On camping, our native
friend became a most intolerable nuisance, and proved himself a cunning
wrestler, suddenly bending down and diving between Breaden's legs, which
he seized at the ankle, nearly succeeding in throwing him to the ground.
With a chain formed of spare hobbles held together by wire, we tethered
him to a tree, scraped out a nest in the sand for him to sleep in, and
lit a fire to cheer him. There he lay quiet until, on making signs that
he was thirsty, one of us went to give him his food and water, when he
darted at his benefactor and fought most viciously. After that, all
through the night, at intervals, he was yelling and dancing, now upright
and now on hands and knees circling his tree and barking like a dog, now
tearing his headgear and stamping it in the sand, threatening us with
hands raised, and finally subsiding into his sandy nest, crying and
whining most piteously. It was an act of some danger to unloose him in
the morning, but before long he was laughing away as heartily as before.
There is no doubt he was as mad as could be. During the day's march he
was up to all kinds of pranks, going through all sorts of antics,
idiotic, sorrowful, angry, and vulgar in turn. The space between the
ridges was greater now, and on them were numerous pointed ant-hills
some two or three feet high. One favourite trick of this lunatic
was to rush towards one of these, and sit perched on the top with
his knees up and feet resting on the side of the heap, a most
uncomfortable position. Another dodge he tried with indifferent success
was that of throwing himself under a camel as he passed, with the object,
I suppose, of diving out on the other side. The camel, however, did not
understand the game and kicked him severely. He was a most extraordinary
person, and indeed I can understand any one going mad in this dreary
region; and to think that these black folk have never known anything
different!
I could enumerate a score of strange tricks that our friend exhibited.
What surprised me most was to see him make use, in unmistakable
pantomime, of a vulgar expression that I thought was only known to
English schoolboys!
Between the Forebank Hills and the tablelands we were now approaching is
an open plain of spinifex some ten miles wide, bounded on North and South
by sand-ridges. From these in the morning the long line of broken
tablelands could be seen ahead of us, and running for a considerable
distance to the eastward. The highest point of those more immediately to
our front I named Mount Fothringham, after my cousin. The headland for
which we were steering was too far off to be reached that night, so we
camped on a ridge, and during the night noticed a small fire in the hills
ahead. It could only be a camp-fire of some natives, so, noting its
direction, and being unable to see anything further, we retired to rest.
The next morning, with the help of the glasses, we could see several
black figures moving about on the sloping foot of the cliffs, and
therefore steered in their direction. Our mad friend had to be
accommodated on the top of a camel, as he refused to walk or move, and I
wished to leave him with friends, or at any rate with fellow-countrymen,
though we no longer required his services as guide, in which
capacity he had been singularly useless. Five miles brought us to the
hills, and close on to the natives' camp whose fire we had seen, before
they discovered us; when they did so they fled, seven or eight of them,
and hid in caves in the sandstone. We had now been only four days since
the last water, but the weather was so hot, feed so scarce, and so much
ground burnt and dusty, that it was time we gave the camels another drink
if we wished to keep them in any sort of condition. From the native camp
a few tracks led round a corner of rock; these I followed, with the
camels coming behind, and soon saw two small native wells sunk in the
sand and debris, held in a cleft in the rock. Nothing but bare rock rose
all round, and on this we made camp, turning the camels out at the foot
of the cliffs where a few bushes grew.
Godfrey and Warri meanwhile had followed the blacks into the caves, and
now returned with two of the finest men I have seen in the interior. One,
a boy, apparently about eighteen years old, splendidly formed and
strongly built, standing nearly six feet high; the other a man of mature
years, not so tall but very broad and well-made. The boy had no hair on
his face, the man a short beard and moustaches, and both had a far better
cast of features than any I have seen further south. Their skin, too,
instead of being black, was a shining reddish-brown colour; this was
perhaps produced by red ochre and grease rubbed in, but in any case it
gave them a finer appearance.
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