Australia Twice Traversed - The Romance Of Exploration, Through Central South Australia, And Western Australia, From 1872 To 1876 By Ernest Giles
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We Kept
On Twenty-Eight Miles Before We Camped, And Looked At Two Or Three
Places, On The Way Ineffectually, For Some Signs Of Water, Having Gone
Forty-Seven Miles; Thermometer In Shade 103 Degrees, The Heat
Increasing One Degree A Day For Several Days.
When we camped we were
hungry, thirsty, tired, covered all over with dry salt mud; so that it
is not to be wondered at if our spirits were not at a very high point,
especially as we were making a forced retreat.
The night was hot,
cloudy, and sultry, and rain clouds gathered in the sky. At about 1
a.m. the distant rumblings of thunder were heard to the
west-north-west, and I was in hopes some rain might fall, as it was
apparently approaching; the thunder was not loud, but the lightning
was most extraordinarily vivid; only a few drops of rain fell, and the
rest of the night was even closer and more sultry than before.
Ere the stars had left the sky we were in our saddles again; the
horses looked most pitiable objects, their flanks drawn in, the
natural vent was distended to an open and extraordinary cavity; their
eyes hollow and sunken, which is always the case with horses when
greatly in want of water. Two days of such stages will thoroughly test
the finest horse that ever stepped. We had thirty-six miles yet to
travel to reach the water. The horses being so jaded, it was late in
the afternoon when they at last crawled into the little glen; the last
few miles being over stones made the pace more slow.
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