It Will Be Observed That In My Journey Through The Scrubs To Perth, I Had Met With No Creeks Or Water-Sheds At All, Until After I Reached The First Outlying Settlement.

The question which now arose was, what kind of country existed between us and my farthest watered point in 1874 at the Rawlinson Range?

In a perfectly straight line it would be 450 miles. The latitude of this camp was 24 degrees 16' 6". I called it the Red Ridge camp. Since my last attack of ophthalmia, I suffer great pain and confusion when using the sextant. The attack I have mentioned in this journey was by no means the only one I have had on my numerous journeys; I have indeed had more or less virulent attacks for the last twenty years, and I believe the disease is now chronic, though suppressed. From the Red Ridge camp we went about eight miles east-north-east, and I found under a mass of low scrubby hills or rises tipped with red sandstone, a rocky cleft in the ground, round about which were numerous old native encampments; I could see water under a rock; the cleft was narrow, and slanted obliquely downwards; it was not wide enough to admit a bucket. There was amply sufficient water for all my camels, but it was very tedious work to get enough out with a quart pot; the rock was sandstone. There was now no doubt in my mind, that all beyond this point was pure and unrelieved desert, for we were surrounded by spinifex, and the first waves of the dreaded sandhills were in view. The country was entirely open, and only a sandy undulation to the eastward bounded the horizon.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 699 of 753
Words from 190370 to 190659 of 204780