The Following Morning, Sunday, The 4th June, Was Remarkably Warm, The Thermometer Not Having Descended During The Night To Less Than 60 Degrees, Though Only Two Mornings Ago It Was Down To 18 Degrees.

I now travelled so as gradually to reach the 24th parallel, in hopes some lines of hills or ranges might be discovered near it.

Our course was east by north. We had many severe ridges of sand to cross, and this made our rate of travelling very slow. We saw one desert oak-tree and a few currajong-trees of the order of Sterculias, some grass-trees, quandong, or native peach, Fusanus, a kind of sandal-wood, and the red gum or blood-wood-trees; the latter always grows upon ground as high as it can get, and therefore ornaments the tops of the sandhills, while all the first-named trees frequent the lower ground between them. To-day we only made good twenty miles, though we travelled until dark, hoping to find some food, or proper bushes for the camels; but, failing in this, had to turn them out at last to find what sustenance they could for themselves. On the following morning, when they were brought up to the camp - at least when some of them were - I was informed that several had got poisoned in the night, and were quite unable to move, while one or two of them were supposed to be dying. This, upon the outskirt of the desert, was terrible news to hear, and the question of what's to be done immediately arose; but it was answered almost as soon, by the evident fact that nothing could be done, because half the camels could not move, and it would be worse than useless to pack up the other half and leave them. So we quietly remained and tended our sick and dying ones so well, that by night one of the worst was got on his legs again. We made them sick with hot water, butter, and mustard, and gave them injections with the clyster pipe as well; the only substance we could get out of them was the chewed-up Gyrostemon ramulosus, which, it being nearly dark, we had not observed when we camped. We drove the mob some distance to another sandhill, where there was very little of this terrible scourge, and the next morning I was delighted to find that the worst ones and the others were evidently better, although they were afflicted with staggers and tremblings of the hind limbs. I was rather undecided what to do, whether to push farther at once into the desert or retreat to the last rocky cleft water, now over five-and-twenty miles behind us. But, as Othello says, once to be in doubt is once to be resolved, and I decided that, as long as they could stagger, the camels should stagger on. In about twelve miles Alec Ross and Tommy found a place where the natives had formerly obtained water by digging.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 368 of 394
Words from 190904 to 191408 of 204780