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° 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° 33´, and longitude 123° 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. The weather had been very disagreeable for some days past, the thermometer in the early dawn generally indicating 18° while in the middle of the day the heat was oppressive.

The flies were still about us, in persecuting myriads. The nature of the country during this march was similar to that previously described, being quite open, it rolled along in ceaseless undulations of sand. The only vegetation besides the ever-abounding spinifex was a few blood-wood-trees on the tops of some of the red heaps of sand, with an occasional desert oak, an odd patch or clump of mallee-trees, standing desolately alone, and perhaps having a stunted specimen or two of the quandong or native peach-tree, and the dreaded Gyrostemon growing among them. The region is so desolate that it is horrifying even to describe. The eye of God looking down on the solitary caravan, as with its slow, and snake-like motion, it presents the only living object around, must have contemplated its appearance on such a scene with pitying admiration, as it forced its way continually on; onwards without pausing, over this vast sandy region, avoiding death only by motion and distance, until some oasis can be found. Slow as eternity it seems to move, but certain we trust as death; and truly the wanderer in its wilds may snatch a fearful joy at having once beheld the scenes, that human eyes ought never again to see. On the 15th of June we found a hollow in which were two or three small salt-lake beds, but these were perfectly dry; on the 16th also another solitary one was seen, and here a few low rises lay across a part of the eastern horizon. On the 17th a little water left in the bottom of a bucket overnight was frozen into a thick cake in the morning, the thermometer indicating 18°. The nights I pass in these fearful regions are more dreadful than the days, for “night is the time for care, brooding o'er days misspent, when the pale spectre of despair comes to our lonely tent;” and often when I lay me down I fall into a dim and death-like trance, wakeful, yet “dreaming dreams no mortals had ever dared to dream before.”

The few native inhabitants of these regions occasionally burn every portion of their territories, and on a favourably windy day a spinifex fire might run on for scores of miles. We occasionally cross such desolated spaces, where every species of vegetation has been by flames devoured. Devoured they are, but not demolished, as out of the roots and ashes of their former natures, phoenix-like, they rise again. A few Australian eagles are occasionally seen far up in the azure sky, hovering with astonished gaze, over the unwonted forms below; and as the leading camels of the caravan frighten some wretched little wallaby from its lair under a spinifex bunch, instantly the eagle swoops from its height, and before the astonished creature has had time to find another refuge he is caught in the talons of his foe. We also are on the watch, and during the momentary struggle, before the eagle can so quiet his victim as to be able to fly away with it, up gallops Reechy, Alec and Tommy, and very often we secure the prize. Round this spot at Buzoe's Grave, just while the water lasts I suppose, there were crows, small hawks, a few birds like cockatoos, and many bronze-winged pigeons. Some natives also were hovering near, attracted probably by the sight of strange smoke. The natives of these regions signal with different kinds of smoke by burning different woods or bark, and know a strange smoke in an instant. Some smokes which they make, go up like a thin white column, others are dark and tower-like, while others again are broad and scattered. These natives would not come to visit us. The small marsupial wallaby, which I mentioned just now, exists throughout the whole of these deserts; they live entirely without water, as do many small birds we occasionally see where there is a patch of timber. The wallabies hide during the day amongst the spinifex bushes, and feed, like other rodents, on their roots at night. Another way of getting some of these wallabies was by knocking them over, blackfellow fashion, with a short stick, when startled from their hiding-places. Tommy used to work very hard at this game, and we usually got one a day for food for our little dogs. They are exceedingly good eating, being very like rabbits in size and taste. We remained at this little oasis, I suppose I may call it—at least it was so to us, though I should not like to return to it with any expectation of getting water again, for when we left, the water had ceased to drain in, and there were only a few pints of thick muddy fluid left in the tank at the end of our three days' rest. The place might well be termed the centre of silence and solitude; despair and desolation are the only intruders here upon sad solitude's triumphant reign. Well may the traveller here desire for more inhabited lands; rather to contend with fierce and warlike men; to live amongst far noisier deaths, or die amid far louder dangers! I often declare that:—

“I'll to Afric lion haunted,
Baboons blood I'll daily quaff;
And I'll go a tiger-hunting
On a thorough-bred giraffe.”

Whenever we had east winds in this region, the weather was cool and agreeable; but when they blow from any other quarter, it becomes much hotter, and the flies return in myriads to annoy us. Where they get to when an east wind blows, the east wind only knows.

Leaving Buzoe's Grave, which had proved a godsend to us, with a swarm of eagles, crows, hawks, vultures, and at night wild dogs, eating up her carcase, in four days' farther travel we neared the spot from the west, where the Alfred and Marie Ranges lie. The first sight of these ranges from the east, had cost my former horse expedition into this region so dear. I could not help believing that the guiding hand of a gracious Providence had upon that occasion prevented me from obtaining my heart's desire to reach them; for had I then done so, I know now, having proved what kind of country lay beyond that, neither I nor any of my former party would ever have returned. Assuredly there is a Providence that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will. These hills were in reality much lower than they appeared to be, when looked at from the east; in fact, they were so low and uninteresting, that I did not investigate them otherwise than with field-glasses. We passed by the northern end, and though the southern end was a little higher, I could see that there were no watering-places possible other than chance rock receptacles, and of these there were no signs. At the northern end we came upon a small shallow kind of stony pan, where a little rain-water was yet lying, proving that the rains we had experienced in May, before leaving the western watershed, must have extended into the desert. We reached this drop of water on the 25th of June, and the camels drank it all up while we rested on the 26th. After five days' more travelling over the same kind of desert as formerly described, except that the sand-mounds rose higher yet in front of us, still progressing eastwards, the well-remembered features of the Rawlinson Range and the terrible Mount Destruction rose at last upon my view.

On reaching the range, I suppose I may say that the exploring part of my expedition was at an end, for I had twice traversed Australia; and although many hundreds of miles had yet to be travelled before we should reach the abodes of civilisation, the intervening country had all been previously explored by myself. For a full account of my former explorations into this region, I must refer my reader to the chapters on my second expedition. The first water we reached in the Rawlinson Range was at a rock-hole about ten miles eastwards from the Circus water, the place from whence Gibson and I started to explore to the west. His death, the loss of all the horses, and my struggles to regain my depot on foot, are they not written in the chronicles of that expedition?

On reaching my former depot at Fort McKellar, I found the whole place so choked up with shrubs and bushes, that it was quite impossible to camp there, without wasting a week in cutting the vegetation away, although it had formerly been sufficiently open for an explorer's camp. The spring was running as strong as ever. The bridge had been washed away. However, at less than a mile from it, there was Tyndall's Spring, with an open shady space, among the clump of fine gum-trees, which gave us an excellent camping-place. Here the camp remained for some days. A line of green bulrushes fringed this spring. While the main party camped here, I once more tried to find some remains or traces of my lost companion Gibson, taking with me only Tommy Oldham. It was quite a forlorn hope, as Gibson had gone away with only one horse; and since we reached the range, we had passed over places where I knew that all the horses I then had with me had gone over the ground, but no signs of former horse-tracks could be seen, therefore the chance of finding any traces of a single animal was infinitesimal. Tommy and I expended three days in trying to discover traces, but it was utterly useless, and we returned unsuccessful to the depot.

Singular to say, on this attempt I found a place west from the end, the Rawlinson Range, where there were some rock-holes on a grassy mulga flat, but we did not require the water, as the camels would not drink. Had I come upon this spot when I was in this region before, it might have saved Gibson and all the horses that were lost with him. I called this little watered spot, Tommy's Flat; the latitude of it is 24° 52´ 3´´. It bears 9° south of west from a peculiar red sandhill that is visible from any of the hills at the western extremity of the Rawlinson Range; and lies in a flat or hollow between the said red sandhill, and the nearest of a few low stony hills, about four miles farther away to the west. On visiting the Circus, I found the water-hole was full and deep. This was very different from its state when I had seen it last. The recording eagle still was sitting immovable on his crag, Prometheus-like, apparently chained to the rock.

On the 11th of July, the main party having been encamped at Tyndall's Springs for seven days, we departed for Sladen Water, at the Pass of the Abencerrages. All the other places previously mentioned on the range, had plenty of water running on for ever, though at the Pass the supply was rather lower than I had seen it previously. There was, however, quite enough for all our requirements. The little sweet-water spring was bubbling up, and running over as of yore. Both at Fort McKellar and here I found that the bones of the horses we had smoked and eaten had been removed by the natives, or wild dogs. At Fort McKellar the smoke-house frame had either fallen or been knocked down; while here, at the Pass, the natives had removed the timber, and placed portions of it in different places and positions. We saw none of the natives belonging to the range, although their smokes were a very short distance away. Sladen Water was always a favourite spot with me, and we rested a day at it for old association's sake.

On the 14th of July we left the place, and travelled along my former route, via Gill's Pinnacle, and all the other watering-places mentioned in my preceding narrative. The Petermann Range looked green and beautiful. It had evidently been visited by rains. A portion of the Rawlinson and the Petermann Ranges were the only spots for hundreds of miles of which this could be said. The Hull here runs near the boundary of the two colonies of South, and Western Australia, and crossing it, we entered the former province once more. When nearly at the eastern end of the Petermann—that is to say, close to Mount Phillips—we camped in Winter's Glen, where the whole tribes of the Petermann were located. They instantly armed themselves, and endeavoured to prevent our progress. Several of them recognised me, and I them; for in my first visit to this range, with Tietkens, we had three encounters with them. They evidently intended mischief again; but they kept off until morning, and we then, being in full marching order, with our firearms in our hands, and all walking alongside of the camels and ready for attack, managed to pass away from them without a collision. Leaving their country behind us, we went via the Sugar-loaf, and thence to the Musgrave Ranges, not now revisiting the marvellous Mount Olga; we entered the range near Glen Watson. There was plenty of water in the glen, but the country, in general, about the range, was in a very dry state. As, however, it has permanent springs, we had no difficulty from want of water. When nearly at the eastern end of the Musgrave Range, a number of natives came to interview the caravan, and actually pulled some coats and blankets off Nicholls's and Tommy's riding camels, and ran away with them. They had previously begged Nicholls to shoot kangaroos for them, thereby showing that they remembered the use of firearms, which formerly I had been compelled to teach them.