The Pendulous Fringe Instead Of Leaves On The Poison Bush Gives It A Strange And Weird Appearance, And To Us It Always Presents The Hideous, And Terrible Form Of A Deadly Upas-Tree.

CHAPTER 5.4.

FROM 11TH JUNE TO 23RD AUGUST, 1876.

Farther into the desert. Sandhills crowned with stones. Natives' smokes and footprints seen. Weakened camels. Native well. Ten days' waterless march. Buzoe's grave. A region of desolation. Eagles. Birds round the well. Natives hovering near. Their different smokes. Wallaby. Sad Solitude's triumphant reign. The Alfred and Marie range once more. The Rawlinson range and Mount Destruction. Australia twice traversed. Fort McKellar. Tyndall's Springs. A last search after Gibson. Tommy's Flat. The Circus. The Eagle. Return to Sladen Water. The Petermann tribes. Marvellous Mount Olga. Glen Watson. Natives of the Musgrave range. A robbery. Cattle camps. The missing link. South for the Everard range. Everard natives. Show us a watering-place. Alec and Tommy find water. More natives. Compelled to give up their plunder. Natives assist at dinner. Like banyan-trees. A bad camping-place. Natives accompany us. Find the native well. The Everard revisited. Gruel thick and slab. Well in the Ferdinand. Rock-hole water. Natives numerous and objectionable. Mischief brewing. A hunt for spears. Attack frustrated. Taking an observation. A midnight foe. The next morning. Funeral march. A new well. Change of country. Approaching the telegraph line. The Alberga. Decrepit native women. The Neales. Mount O'Halloran. The telegraph line. Dry state of the country. Hann's Creek. Arrival at the Peake.

On the 11th of June I was delighted to be able to be again upon the move, and leave this detestable poisonous place and our fifteen-foot shaft behind. Our only regret was that we had been compelled to remain so long. The camels had nearly all been poisoned, some very much worse than others; but all looked gaunt and hollow-eyed, and were exceedingly weak and wretched, one remarkable exception being noticed in Alec Ross's riding-cow, old Buzoe, who had either not eaten the poison plant, or had escaped untouched by it. Our course was now east by north, and as we got farther into the desert, I noticed that occasionally some of the undulations of sand were crowned with stones, wherever they came from. Where these stones crop up a growth of timber, generally mulga, occurs with them. It is sandstone that tips these rises. Some smokes of native fires were seen from our line of march, in northerly and southerly directions, and occasionally the footprints upon the sands, of some wandering child of the desert. These were the only indications we could discover of the existence of primordial man upon the scene. We passed a few grass-trees, which are usually called "black boys" in almost every part of the continent where they exist, and they seem to range over nearly the whole of Australia, from Sydney to Perth, south of the Tropic. The camels were so weak that to-day we could only accomplish about eighteen miles. At five miles, on the following morning, we passed a hollow with some mulga acacia in it. Near them Alec and I found a place where the number of deserted huts, or gunyahs of the natives induced us to look about for a well or some other kind of watering-place. An old well was soon found, which was very shallow; the water was slightly brackish and not more than three feet below the surface. How I wished I had known of its existence before, it being not twenty-five miles from our poison camp, and that some good acacia bushes grew here also; as it was, I made no use of it. The weather being cool, and the camels having filled themselves with water at the deep well, they would not drink. That afternoon we got into a hollow where there was a low ridge of flat-topped cliffs, and a good deal of mulga timber in it. Very likely in times of rain a flow of water might be found here, if there ever are times of rain in such a region. We just cleared the valley by night, having travelled nearly twenty miles. My latitude here was 23 degrees 56' 20" and not desiring to go any farther north, I inclined my course a little southerly - that is to say, in an east by south direction.

We had left the deep well on the 9th June, and not until ten days of continuous travelling had been accomplished - it being now the 18th - did we see any more water. That evening we reached a little trifling water-channel, with a few small scattered white gum-trees, coming from a low stony mulga-crowned ridge, and by digging in it we found a slight soakage of water. Here we dug a good-sized tank, which the water partly filled, and this enabled us to water all the camels. They had travelled 230 miles from our deep well. For the last two or three days poor old Buzoe, Alec Ross's riding cow, has been very ill, and almost unable to travel; she is old and worn out, poor old creature, having been one of Sir Thomas Elder's original importations from India. She had always been a quiet, easy-paced old pet, and I was very much grieved to see her ailing. I did not like to abandon her, and we had to drag her with a bull camel and beat her along, until she crossed this instalment of Gibson's Desert: but she never left this spot, which I have named Buzoe's Grave. I don't think this old cow had been poisoned - at least she never showed any signs of it; I believe it was sheer old age and decay that assailed her at last. The position of this welcome watered spot was in latitude 24 degrees 33', and longitude 123 degrees 57'. It was by wondrous good fortune that we came upon it, and it was the merest chance that any water was there. In another day or two there would have been none; as it was, only a little rainwater, that had not quite ceased to drain down the half-stony, half-sandy bed of the little gully, was all we got.

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