Australia Twice Traversed - The Romance Of Exploration, Through Central South Australia, And Western Australia, From 1872 To 1876 By Ernest Giles
- Page 577 of 753 - First - Home
The Latitude Of The Camp On
This Lake Was 29 Degrees 24' 8", And It Was Twenty-Two Miles From The
Dam.
We continued our march and proceeded still upon the same course,
still under our usual routine of steering.
By the fifth night of our
travels we had met no water or any places that could hold it, and
apparently we had left all the salt basins behind. Up to this point we
had been continually in dense scrubs, but here the country became a
little more open; myal timber, acacia, generally took the places of
the mallee and the casuarinas; the spinifex disappeared, and real
grass grew in its place. I was in hopes of finding water if we should
debouch upon a plain, or perhaps discover some ranges or hills which
the scrubs might have hidden from us. On the sixth day of our march we
entered fairly on a plain, the country being very well grassed. It
also had several kinds of salsolaceous bushes upon it; these furnish
excellent fodder plants for all herbivorous animals. Although the soil
was not very good, being sand mixed with clay, it was a very hard and
good travelling country; the camels' feet left scarcely any impression
on it, and only by the flattened grass and crushed plants trodden to
earth by our heavy-weighing ships, could our trail now be followed.
The plain appeared to extend a great distance all around us. A solemn
stillness pervaded the atmosphere; nobody spoke much above a whisper.
Once we saw some wild turkey bustards, and Mr. Young managed to wing
one of them on the seventh day from the dam.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 577 of 753
Words from 157010 to 157287
of 204780