Several More Natives Came To The Camp, And Some Of Them Worked A Little At Watering The Camels, But Were Greatly Scandalised At Seeing Them Drink Such Enormous Quantities, And No Doubt, In Their Heart Of Hearts, They Were Grieved That They Had Shown Us The Place.

And in order to recoup themselves in some measure for their romantic generosity, they quietly walked away with several unconsidered trifles out of the camp, such as ration bags, towels, socks, etc.

These thefts always occur when I am away. I made one old gentleman who took some things disgorge his loot, and he and his friend who had dined with us went away, in the last stage of displeasure. There are apparently but few natives about here just now; had there been more of them we might have had some trouble, as indeed I subsequently had at the rock-holes at the back of this hill.

The following day we went round to Alec's rock-holes, intending to have dinner, water the camels if they would drink, and fill our casks before plunging again into the scrubs that extended everywhere to the south. To the east a flat-topped, bluff-faced hill was visible. While we were at dinner several natives came and assisted us, and pointed in a direction a little west of south, where they said water existed. The whole space round the foot of the rocks here is choked up with a thick and vigorous growth of the native fig-trees, which grow somewhat like banyan-trees, except that suckers do not descend from the upper branches and take root in the ground alongside the parent stem; but the roots of this tree run along the rocks to find crevices with soil, and then a fresh growth springs up; in general it does not grow very high, twenty feet is about the limit. There was a small creek channel, and mulga scrubs to the west of it, that grew right up to the bank, and any party camping here would be completely hemmed in. I am particular in describing the place, as on a subsequent occasion, myself and the party then with me, escaped death there. I will relate the circumstances further on. Now we left the place after dinner, and the natives accompanied us; we camped in mulga scrubs at about ten miles from the rocks. These young darkies seemed very good, and friendly fellows; in all wild tribes of Australian natives, the boys and very young men, as well as the girls and women, seem to take immediately to white men. The young children, however, are generally very much frightened; but it is the vile and wicked old men that are the arch-villains of the piece, and who excite the passions of the juniors of the tribe to commit all sorts of atrocities.

These fellows were the best of friends with my men and myself; we were laughing and joking and generally having a good time. I amused them greatly by passing a stick through my nose; I had formerly gone through an excruciating operation for that purpose, and telling them I once had been a black fellow. They spoke but little English, and it was mostly through a few words that Alec Ross knew, of the Peake, Macumba, or Alberga tribes that we could talk to each other at all. After this we got them map-making on the sand. They demonstrated that the Ferdinand, which we had left, and had still on our right or west of us, running south, swept round suddenly to the eastwards and now lay across the country in front of us; that in its further progress it ran into, and formed a lake, then continuing, it at last reached a big salt lake, probably Lake Eyre; they also said we should get water by digging in the sand in the morning, when we struck the Ferdinand channel again. Soon after we started and were proceeding on our course, south 26 degrees west, from the rock-water, the natives all fell back and we saw no more of them. In twenty miles we came to the creek, and turning down its channel eastwards we found the well of which they had told us. There was plenty of water in it, no doubt, but we did not require it. The well seemed rather deep. We followed the creek for some distance, at length it became very undefined, and the gum timber disappeared. Only a few acacia bushes now indicated the flow of the water over the grassy mulga flats, which wound about so much around sandhills in the scrub, that I left the creek, and pushed on now for the South Australian Telegraph Line.

I will now give a rapid account of what I said was a narrow escape from death at those rock-holes we had just left. I may say in passing, that what I have recorded as my travels and explorations in Australia in these volumes, are probably not half of what I have really performed, only I divide them under the two headings of public and private explorations.

In the month of December, 1882, I was in this part of the world again. During the six years that had elapsed since my last visit in 1876, a survey party had reached these ranges on a trigonometrical survey, and upon its return, the officer in charge reported having had some trouble and a collision with the natives of the Everard Range. I suppose my second visit occurred two years after that event. I was accompanied on that journey by a very young friend, named Vernon Edwards, from Adelaide, and two young men named Perkins and Fitz, the latter being cook, and a very good fellow he proved to be, but Perkins was nothing of the sort. I had a black boy named Billy, and we had twelve camels. I approached the Everard Range from the south-westward, having found a good watering-place, which I called Verney's Wells, in that direction.

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