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Australia Twice Traversed

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Title: Australia Twice Traversed

Author: Ernest Giles


        
Release date: August 26, 2004 [eBook #4974]
                Most recently updated: December 28, 2020

Language: English

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Credits: Produced by Sue Asscher and Colin Beck


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AUSTRALIA TWICE TRAVERSED ***




Produced by Sue Asscher and Colin Beck





AUSTRALIA TWICE TRAVERSED.

THE ROMANCE OF EXPLORATION,

BEING

A NARRATIVE COMPILED FROM THE JOURNALS

OF

FIVE EXPLORING EXPEDITIONS

INTO AND THROUGH

CENTRAL SOUTH AUSTRALIA, AND WESTERN AUSTRALIA,

FROM 1872 TO 1876.

BY

ERNEST GILES

FELLOW, AND GOLD MEDALLIST, OF THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON.


"GO FORTH, MY BOOK, AND SHOW THE THINGS,
PILGRIMAGE UNTO THE PILGRIM BRINGS."

BUNYAN.


(PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR. Signed: "Yours faithfully, Ernest Giles.")


CONTENTS.

AUTHOR'S NOTES.

INTRODUCTION.

PREFACE.


BOOK 1.

CHAPTER 1.1. From 4th to 30th August, 1872.

CHAPTER 1.2. From 30th August to 6th September, 1872.

CHAPTER 1.3. From 6th to 17th September, 1872.

CHAPTER 1.4. From 17th September to 1st October, 1872.

CHAPTER 1.5. From 1st to 15th October, 1872.

CHAPTER 1.6. From 15th October, 1872 to 31st January, 1873.


BOOK 2.

CHAPTER 2.1. From 4th to 22nd August, 1873.

CHAPTER 2.2. From 22nd August to 10th September, 1873.

CHAPTER 2.3. From 10th to 30th September, 1873.

CHAPTER 2.4. From 30th September to 9th November, 1873.

CHAPTER 2.5. From 9th November to 23rd December, 1873.

CHAPTER 2.6. From 23rd December, 1873 to 16th January, 1874.

CHAPTER 2.7. From 16th January to 19th February, 1874.

CHAPTER 2.8. From 20th February to 12th March, 1874.

CHAPTER 2.9. From 12th March to 19th April, 1874.

CHAPTER 2.10. From 20th April to 21st May, 1874.

CHAPTER 2.11. From 21st May to 20th July, 1874.


BOOK 3.

CHAPTER 3.1. From 13th March to 1st April, 1875.

CHAPTER 3.2. From 2nd April to 6th May, 1875.


BOOK 4.

CHAPTER 4.1. From 6th May to 27th July, 1875.

CHAPTER 4.2. From 27th July to 6th October, 1875.

CHAPTER 4.3. From 6th October to 18th October, 1875.

CHAPTER 4.4. From 18th October to 18th November, 1875.


BOOK 5.

CHAPTER 5.1. From 18th November, 1875 to 10th April, 1876.

CHAPTER 5.2. From 10th April to 7th May, 1876.

CHAPTER 5.3. From 7th May to 10th June, 1876.

CHAPTER 5.4. From 11th June to 23rd August, 1876.

CHAPTER 5.5. From 23rd August to 20th September, 1876.


APPENDIX.


INDEX.




ILLUSTRATIONS.

PORTRAIT OF AUTHOR.

CHAMBERS' PILLAR.

THE MOLOCH HORRIDUS.

VIEW IN THE GLEN OF PALMS.

PALM-TREE FOUND IN THE GLEN OF PALMS.

GLEN EDITH.

PENNY'S CREEK.

ESCAPE GLEN--THE ADVANCE.

ESCAPE GLEN--THE RETREAT.

MIDDLETON'S PASS AND FISH PONDS.

JUNCTION OF THE PALMER AND THE FINKE.

AN INCIDENT OF TRAVEL.

TIETKENS'S BIRTHDAY CREEK AND MOUNT CARNARVON.

ON BIRTHDAY CREEK.

ENCOUNTER WITH NATIVES AT "THE OFFICER," MUSGRAVE RANGE.

THE FAIRIES' GLEN.

ZOE'S GLEN.

THE STINKING PIT.

ATTACK AT FORT MUELLER.

DRAGGED BY DIAWAY.

ATTACK AT SLADEN WATER.

GILL'S PINNACLE.

VIEW ON THE PETERMANN RANGE.

ATTACK AT THE FARTHEST EAST.

MOUNT OLGA.

CIRCUS WATER.

FIRST VIEW OF THE ALFRED AND MARIE RANGE.

THE LAST EVER SEEN OF GIBSON.

ALONE IN THE DESERT.

JIMMY AT FORT MCKELLAR.

THE HERMIT HILL AND FINNISS SPRING.

WYNBRING ROCK.

LITTLE SALT LAKE.

IN QUEEN VICTORIA'S DESERT.

QUEEN VICTORIA'S SPRING.

ATTACK AT ULARRING.

FORCING A PASSAGE THROUGH THE SCRUBS IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA.

FIRST VIEW OF MOUNT CHURCHMAN.

THE FIRST WHITE MAN MET IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA.

ARRIVAL AT CULHAM (SAMUEL PHILLIPS'S).

ARRIVAL AT PERTH.

ARRIVAL AT THE TOWN HALL, PERTH.

FAREWELL TO WESTERN AUSTRALIA.

GLEN ROSS.

GLEN FERDINAND.

MAP OF FIRST EXPEDITION, 1872.

MAP OF SECOND EXPEDITION, 1873-4.

MAP OF AUSTRALIA, SHOWING THE SEVERAL ROUTES.

MAP OF THIRD EXPEDITION, 1875.

MAP OF FOURTH EXPEDITION, 1875.

MAP OF FIFTH EXPEDITION, 1876.



AUTHOR'S NOTES.

The original journals of the field notes, from which the present
narrative is compiled, were published, as each expedition ended, as
parliamentary papers by the Government of the Colony of South
Australia.

The journals of the first two expeditions, formed a small book, which
was distributed mostly to the patrons who had subscribed to the fund
for my second expedition. The account of the third, found its way into
the South Australian "Observer," while the records of the fourth and
fifth journeys remained as parliamentary documents, the whole never
having appeared together. Thus only fragments of the accounts of my
wanderings became known; and though my name as an explorer has been
heard of, both in Australia and England, yet very few people even in
the Colonies are aware of what I have really done. Therefore it was
thought that a work embodying the whole of my explorations might be
acceptable to both English and Colonial readers.

Some years have been allowed to elapse since these journeys were
commenced; but the facts are the same, and to those not mixed up in
the adventures, the incidents as fresh as when they occurred.

Unavoidably, I have had to encounter a large area of desert country in
the interior of the colonies of South Australia, and Western
Australia, in my various wanderings; but I also discovered
considerable tracts of lands watered and suitable for occupation.

It is not in accordance with my own feelings in regard to Australia
that I am the chronicler of her poorer regions; and although an
Englishman, Australia has no sincerer well-wisher; had it been
otherwise, I could not have performed the work these volumes record.
It has indeed been often a cause of regret that my lines of march
should have led me away from the beautiful and fertile places upon
Australia's shores, where our countrymen have made their homes.

On the subject of the wonderful resources of Australia I am not called
upon to enlarge, and surely all who have heard her name must have
heard also of her gold, copper, wool, wine, beef, mutton, wheat,
timber, and other products; and if any other evidence were wanting to
show what Australia really is, a visit to her cities, and an
experience of her civilisation, not forgetting the great revenues of
her different provinces, would dispel at once all previous inaccurate
impressions of those who, never having seen, perhaps cannot believe in
the existence of them.

In the course of this work my reader will easily discover to whom it
is dedicated, without a more formal statement under such a heading.
The preface, which may seem out of its place, is merely such to my own
journeys. I thought it due to my readers and my predecessors in the
Australian field of discovery, that I should give a rapid epitome
(which may contain some minor errors) of what they had done, and which
is here put forward by way of introduction.

Most of the illustrations, except one or two photographs, were
originally from very rough sketches, or I might rather say scratches,
of mine, improved upon by Mr. Val Prinsep, of Perth, Western
Australia, who drew most of the plates referring to the camel
expeditions, while those relating to the horse journeys were sketched
by Mr. Woodhouse, Junr., of Melbourne; the whole, however, have
undergone a process of reproduction at the hands of London artists.

To Mrs. Cashel Hoey, the well-known authoress and Australian
correspondent, who revised and cleared my original manuscripts, I have
to accord my most sincere thanks. To Mr. Henniker-Heaton, M.P., who
appears to be the Imperial Member in the British Parliament for all
Australia, I am under great obligations, he having introduced me to
Mr. Marston, of the publishing firm who have produced these volumes. I
also have to thank Messrs. Clowes and Sons for the masterly way in
which they have printed this work. Also Messrs. Creed, Robinson,
Fricker, and Symons, of the publishing staff. The maps have been
reproduced by Weller, the well-known geographer.

(ILLUSTRATION: Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society of London.
"Victoria D.G. Britanniarum Regina, 1837, Patrona.
Or, Terras Reclusas, Ernest Giles, 1880.")


INTRODUCTION.

Before narrating my own labours in opening out portions of the unknown
interior of Australia, it will be well that I should give a succinct
account of what others engaged in the same arduous enterprise around
the shores and on the face of the great Southern Continent, have
accomplished.

After the wondrous discoveries of Columbus had set the Old World into
a state of excitement, the finding of new lands appears to have become
the romance of that day, as the exploration by land of unknown regions
has been that of our time; and in less than fifty years after the
discovery of America navigators were searching every sea in hopes of
emulating the deeds of that great explorer; but nearly a hundred years
elapsed before it became known in Europe that a vast and misty land
existed in the south, whose northern and western shores had been met
in certain latitudes and longitudes, but whose general outline had not
been traced, nor was it even then visited with anything like a
systematic geographical object. The fact of the existence of such a
land at the European antipodes no doubt set many ardent and
adventurous spirits upon the search, but of their exploits and labours
we know nothing.

The Dutch were the most eager in their attempts, although Torres, a
Spaniard, was, so far as we know, the first to pass in a voyage from
the West Coast of America to India, between the Indian or Malay
Islands, and the great continent to the south, hence we have Torres
Straits. The first authentic voyager, however, to our actual shores
was Theodoric Hertoge, subsequently known as Dirk Hartog--bound from
Holland to India. He arrived at the western coast between the years
1610 and 1616. An island on the west coast bears his name: there he
left a tin plate nailed to a tree with the date of his visit and the
name of his ship, the Endragt, marked upon it. Not very long after
Theodoric Hertoge, and still to the western and north-western coasts,
came Zeachern, Edels, Nuitz, De Witt, and Pelsart, who was wrecked
upon Houtman's Albrolhos, or rocks named by Edels, in his ship the
Leewin or Lion. Cape Leewin is called after this vessel. Pelsart left
two convicts on the Australian coast in 1629. Carpenter was the next
navigator, and all these adventurers have indelibly affixed their
names to portions of the coast of the land they discovered. The next,
and a greater than these, at least greater in his navigating
successes, was Abel Janz Tasman, in 1642. Tasman was instructed to
inquire from the native inhabitants for Pelsart's two convicts, and to
bring them away with him, IF THEY ENTREATED HIM; but they were never
heard of again. Tasman sailed round a great portion of the Australian
coast, discovered what he named Van Diemen's land, now Tasmania, and
New Zealand. He it was who called the whole, believing it to be one,
New Holland, after the land of his birth. Next we have Dampier, an
English buccaneer--though the name sounds very like Dutch; it was
probably by chance only that he and his roving crew visited these
shores. Then came Wilhelm Vlaming with three ships. God save the mark
to call such things ships. How the men performed the feats they did,
wandering over vast and unknown oceans, visiting unknown coasts with
iron-bound shores, beset with sunken reefs, subsisting on food not fit
for human beings, suffering from scurvy caused by salted diet and
rotten biscuit, with a short allowance of water, in torrid zones, and
liable to be attacked and killed by hostile natives, it is difficult
for us to conceive. They suffered all the hardships it is possible to
imagine upon the sea, and for what? for fame, for glory? That their
names and achievements might be handed down to us; and this seems to
have been their only reward; for there was no Geographical Society's
medal in those days with its motto to spur them on.

Vlaming was the discoverer of the Swan River, upon which the seaport
town of Fremantle and the picturesque city of Perth, in Western
Australia, now stand. This river he discovered in 1697, and he was the
first who saw Dirk Hartog's tin plate.

Dampier's report of the regions he had visited caused him to be sent
out again in 1710 by the British Government, and upon his return, all
previous doubts, if any existed, as to the reality of the existence of
this continent, were dispelled, and the position of its western shores
was well established. Dampier discovered a beautiful flower of the pea
family known as the Clianthus Dampierii. In 1845 Captain Sturt found
the same flower on his Central Australian expedition, and it is now
generally known as Sturt's Desert Pea, but it is properly named in its
botanical classification, after its original discoverer.

After Dampier's discoveries, something like sixty years elapsed before
Cook appeared upon the scene, and it was not until his return to
England that practical results seemed likely to accrue to any nation
from the far-off land. I shall not recapitulate Cook's voyages; the
first fitted out by the British Government was made in 1768, but Cook
did not touch upon Australia's coast until two years later, when,
voyaging northwards along the eastern coast, he anchored at a spot he
called Botany Bay, from the brightness and abundance of the beautiful
wild flowers he found growing there. Here two natives attempted to
prevent his landing, although the boats were manned with forty men.
The natives threw stones and spears at the invaders, but nobody was
killed. At this remote and previously unvisited spot one of the crew
named Forby Sutherland, who had died on board the Endeavour, was
buried, his being the first white man's grave ever dug upon
Australia's shore; at least the first authenticated one--for might not
the remaining one of the two unfortunate convicts left by Pelsart have
dug a grave for his companion who was the first to die, no man
remaining to bury the survivor? Cook's route on this voyage was along
the eastern coast from Cape Howe in south latitude 37 degrees 30' to
Cape York in Torres Straits in latitude 10 degrees 40'. He called the
country New South Wales, from its fancied resemblance to that older
land, and he took possession of the whole in the name of George III as
England's territory.

Cook reported so favourably of the regions he had discovered that the
British Government decided to establish a colony there; the spot
finally selected was at Port Jackson, and the settlement was called
Sydney in 1788. After Cook came the Frenchman Du Fresne and his
unfortunate countryman, La Perouse. Then Vancouver, Blyth, and the
French General and Admiral, D'Entre-Casteaux, who went in search of
the missing La Perouse. In 1826, Captain Dillon, an English navigator,
found the stranded remains of La Perouse's ships at two of the
Charlotte Islands group. We now come to another great English
navigator, Matthew Flinders, who was the first to circumnavigate
Australia; to him belongs the honour of having given to this great
island continent the name it now bears. In 1798, Flinders and Bass,
sailing in an open boat from Sydney, discovered that Australia and Van
Diemen's Land were separate; the dividing straits between were then
named after Bass. In 1802, during his second voyage in the
Investigator, a vessel about the size of a modern ship's launch,
Flinders had with him as a midshipman John Franklin, afterwards the
celebrated Arctic navigator. On his return to England, Flinders,
touching at the Isle of France, was made prisoner by the French
governor and detained for nearly seven years, during which time a
French navigator Nicolas Baudin, with whom came Perron and Lacepede
the naturalists, and whom Flinders had met at a part of the southern
coast which he called Encounter Bay in reference to that meeting,
claimed and reaped the honour and reward of a great portion of the
unfortunate prisoner's work. Alas for human hopes and aspirations,
this gallant sailor died before his merits could be acknowledged or
rewarded, and I believe one or two of his sisters were, until very
lately, living in the very poorest circumstances.

The name of Flinders is, however, held in greater veneration than any
of his predecessors or successors, for no part of the Australian coast
was unvisited by him. Rivers, mountain ranges, parks, districts,
counties, and electoral divisions, have all been named after him; and,
indeed, I may say the same of Cook; but, his work being mostly
confined to the eastern coast, the more western colonies are not so
intimately connected with his name, although an Australian poet has
called him the Columbus of our shore.

After Flinders and Baudin came another Frenchman, De Freycinet, bound
on a tour of discovery all over the world.

Australia's next navigator was Captain, subsequently Admiral, Philip
Parker King, who carried out four separate voyages of discovery,
mostly upon the northern coasts. At three places upon which King
favourably reported, namely Camden Harbour on the north-west coast,
Port Essington in Arnhem's Land, and Port Cockburn in Apsley Straits,
between Melville and Bathurst Islands on the north coast, military and
penal settlements were established, but from want of further
emigration these were abandoned. King completed a great amount of
marine surveying on these voyages, which occurred between the years
1813 and 1822.

Captain Wickham in the Beagle comes next; he discovered the Fitzroy
River, which he found emptied itself into a gulf named King's Sound.
In consequence of ill-health Captain Wickham, after but a short
sojourn on these shores, resigned his command, and Lieutenant Lort
Stokes, who had sailed with him in the Beagle round the rocky shores
of Magellan's Straits and Tierra del Fuego, received the command from
the Lords of the Admiralty. Captain Lort Stokes may be considered the
last, but by no means the least, of the Australian navigators. On one
occasion he was speared by natives of what he justly called Treachery
Bay, near the mouth of the Victoria River in Northern Australia,
discovered by him. His voyages occurred between the years 1839 and
1843. He discovered the mouths of most of the rivers that fall into
the Gulf of Carpentaria, besides many harbours, bays, estuaries, and
other geographical features upon the North Australian coasts.

The early navigators had to encounter much difficulty and many dangers
in their task of making surveys from the rough achievements of the
Dutch, down to the more finished work of Flinders, King and Stokes. It
is to be remembered that they came neither for pleasure nor for rest,
but to discover the gulfs, bays, peninsulas, mountains, rivers and
harbours, as well as to make acquaintance with the native races, the
soils, and animal and vegetable products of the great new land, so as
to diffuse the knowledge so gained for the benefit of others who might
come after them. In cockle-shells of little ships what dangers did
they not encounter from shipwreck on the sunken edges of coral ledges
of the new and shallow seas, how many were those who were never heard
of again; how many a little exploring bark with its adventurous crew
have been sunk in Australia's seas, while those poor wretches who
might, in times gone by, have landed upon the inhospitable shore would
certainly have been killed by the wild and savage hordes of hostile
aborigines, from whom there could be no escape! With Stokes the list
of those who have visited and benefited Australia by their labours
from the sea must close; my only regret being that so poor a
chronicler is giving an outline of their achievements. I now turn to
another kind of exploration--and have to narrate deeds of even greater
danger, though of a different kind, done upon Australia's face.

In giving a short account of those gallant men who have left
everlasting names as explorers upon the terra firma and terra
incognita of our Australian possession, I must begin with the
earliest, and go back a hundred years to the arrival of Governor
Phillip at Botany Bay, in 1788, with eleven ships, which have ever
since been known as "The First Fleet." I am not called upon to narrate
the history of the settlement, but will only say that the Governor
showed sound judgment when he removed his fleet and all his men from
Botany Bay to Port Jackson, and founded the village of Sydney, which
has now become the huge capital city of New South Wales. A new region
was thus opened out for British labour, trade, capital, and
enterprise. From the earliest days of the settlement adventurous and
enterprising men, among whom was the Governor himself, who was on one
occasion speared by the natives, were found willing to venture their
lives in the exploration of the country upon whose shores they had so
lately landed. Wentworth, Blaxland, and Evans appear on the list as
the very first explorers by land. The chief object they had in view
was to surmount the difficulties which opposed their attempting to
cross the Blue Mountains, and Evans was the first who accomplished
this. The first efficient exploring expedition into the interior of
New South Wales was conducted by John Oxley, the Surveyor-General of
the colony, in 1817. His principal discovery was that some of the
Australian streams ran inland, towards the interior, and he traced
both the Macquarie and the Lachlan, named by him after Governor
Lachlan Macquarie, until he supposed they ended in vast swamps or
marshes, and thereby founded the theory that in the centre of
Australia there existed a great inland sea. After Oxley came two
explorers named respectively Hovell and Hume, who penetrated, in 1824,
from the New South Wales settlements into what is now the colony of
Victoria. They discovered the upper portions of the River Murray,
which they crossed somewhere in the neighbourhood of the present town
of Albury. The river was then called the Hume, but it was subsequently
called the Murray by Captain Charles Sturt, who heads the list of
Australia's heroes with the title of The Father of Australian
Exploration.

In 1827 Sturt made one of the greatest discoveries of this century--or
at least one of the most useful for his countrymen--that of the River
Darling, the great western artery of the river system of New South
Wales, and what is now South-western Queensland. In another
expedition, in 1832, Sturt traced the Murrumbidgee River, discovered
by Oxley, in boats into what he called the Murray. This river is the
same found by Hovell and Hume, Sturt's name for it having been
adopted. He entered the new stream, which was lined on either bank by
troops of hostile natives, from whom he had many narrow escapes, and
found it trended for several hundreds of miles in a west-north-west
direction, confirming him in his idea of an inland sea; but at a
certain point, which he called the great north-west bend, it suddenly
turned south and forced its way to the sea at Encounter Bay, where
Flinders met Baudin in 1803. Neither of these explorers appear to have
discovered the river's mouth. On this occasion Sturt discovered the
province or colony of South Australia, which in 1837 was proclaimed by
the British Government, and in that colony Sturt afterwards made his
home.

Sturt's third and final expedition was from the colony of South
Australia into Central Australia, in 1843-1845. This was the first
truly Central Australian expedition that had yet been despatched,
although in 1841 Edward Eyre had attempted the same arduous
enterprise. Of this I shall write anon. On his third expedition Sturt
discovered the Barrier, the Grey, and the Stokes ranges, and among
numerous smaller watercourses he found and named Strezletki's,
Cooper's, and Eyre's Creeks. The latter remained the furthest known
inland water of Australia for many years after Sturt's return. Sturt
was accompanied, as surveyor and draftsman, by John McDouall Stuart,
whom I shall mention in his turn. So far as my opinion, formed in my
wanderings over the greater portions of the country explored by Sturt,
goes, his estimate of the regions he visited has scarcely been borne
out according to the views of the present day.

Like Oxley, he was fully impressed with the notion that an inland sea
did exist, and although he never met such a feature in his travels, he
seems to have thought it must be only a little more remote than the
parts he had reached. He was fully prepared to come upon an inland
sea, for he carried a boat on a bullock waggon for hundreds of miles,
and when he finally abandoned it he writes: "Here we left the boat
which I had vainly hoped would have ploughed the waters of an inland
sea." Several years afterwards I discovered pieces of this boat, built
of New Zealand pine, in the debris of a flood about twenty miles down
the watercourse where it had been left. A great portion, if not all
the country, explored by that expedition is now highly-prized pastoral
land, and a gold field was discovered almost in sight of a depot
formed by Sturt, at a spot where he was imprisoned at a water hole for
six months without moving his camp. He described the whole region as a
desert, and he seems to have been haunted by the notion that he had
got into and was surrounded by a wilderness the like of which no human
being had ever seen or heard of before. His whole narrative is a tale
of suffering and woe, and he says on his map, being at the furthest
point he attained in the interior, about forty-five miles from where
he had encamped on the watercourse he called Eyre's Creek, now a
watering place for stock on a Queensland cattle run: "Halted at sunset
in a country such as I verily believe has no parallel upon the earth's
surface, and one which was terrible in its aspect." Sturt's views are
only to be accounted for by the fact that what we now call excellent
sheep and cattle country appeared to him like a desert, because his
comparisons were made with the best alluvial lands he had left near
the coast. Explorers as a rule, great ones more particularly, are not
without rivals in so honourable a field as that of discovery, although
not every one who undertakes the task is fitted either by nature or
art to adorn the chosen part. Sturt was rivalled by no less celebrated
an individual than Major, afterwards Sir Thomas, Mitchell, a soldier
of the Peninsula War, and some professional jealousy appears to have
existed between them.

Major Mitchell was then the Surveyor-General of the Colony, and he
entirely traversed and made known the region he appropriately named
Australia Felix, now the colony of Victoria. Mitchell, like Sturt,
conducted three expeditions: the first in 1831-1832, when he traced
the River Darling previously discovered by Sturt, for several hundred
miles, until he found it trend directly to the locality at which
Sturt, in his journey down the Murray, had seen and laid down its
mouth or junction with the larger river. Far up the Darling, in
latitude 30 degrees 5', Mitchell built a stockade and formed a depot,
which he called Fort Bourke; near this spot the present town of Bourke
is situated and now connected by rail with Sydney, the distance being
about 560 miles. Mitchell's second journey, when he visited Australia
Felix, was made in 1835, and his last expedition into tropical
Australia was in 1845. On this expedition he discovered a large river
running in a north-westerly direction, and as its channel was so
large, and its general appearance so grand, he conjectured that it
would prove to be the Victoria River of Captain Lort Stokes, and that
it would run on in probably increasing size, or at least in
undiminished magnificence, through the 1100 or 1200 miles of country
that intervened between his own and Captain Stokes's position. He
therefore called it the Victoria River. Gregory subsequently
discovered that Mitchell's Victoria turned south, and was one and the
same watercourse called Cooper's Creek by Sturt. The upper portion of
this watercourse is now known by its native name of the Barcoo, the
name Victoria being ignored. Mitchell always had surveyors with him,
who chained as he went every yard of the thousands of miles he
explored. He was knighted for his explorations, and lived to enjoy the
honour; so indeed was Sturt, but in his case it was only a mockery,
for he was totally blind and almost on his deathbed when the
recognition of his numerous and valuable services was so tardily
conferred upon him. (Dr. W.H. Browne, who accompanied Sturt to Central
Australia in 1843-5 as surgeon and naturalist, is living in London;
and another earlier companion of the Father of Australian Exploration,
George McCleay, still survives.)

These two great travellers were followed by, or worked simultaneously,
although in a totally different part of the continent, namely the
north-west coast, with Sir George Grey in 1837-1839. His labours and
escapes from death by spear-wounds, shipwreck, starvation, thirst, and
fatigue, fill his volumes with incidents of the deepest interest.
Edward Eyre, subsequently known as Governor Eyre, made an attempt to
reach, in 1840-1841, Central Australia by a route north from the city
of Adelaide; and as Sturt imagined himself surrounded by a desert, so
Eyre thought he was hemmed in by a circular or horse-shoe-shaped salt
depression, which he called Lake Torrens; because, wherever he tried
to push northwards, north-westwards, eastwards, or north-eastwards, he
invariably came upon the shores of one of these objectionable and
impassable features. As we now know, there are several of them with
spaces of traversable ground between, instead of the obstacle being
one continuous circle by which he supposed he was surrounded. In
consequence of his inability to overcome this obstruction, Eyre gave
up the attempt to penetrate into Central Australia, but pushing
westerly, round the head of Flinders' Spencer's Gulf, where now the
inland seaport town of Port Augusta stands, he forced his way along
the coast line from Port Lincoln to Fowler's Bay (Flinders), and
thence along the perpendicular cliffs of the Great Australian Bight to
Albany, at King George's Sound.

This journey of Eyre's was very remarkable in more ways than one; its
most extraordinary incident being the statement that his horses
travelled for seven days and nights without water. I have travelled
with horses in almost every part of Australia, but I know that after
three days and three nights without water horses would certainly knock
up, die, or become utterly useless, and it would be impossible to make
them continue travelling. Another remarkable incident of his march is
strange enough. One night whilst Eyre was watching the horses, there
being no water at the encampment, Baxter, his only white companion,
was murdered by two little black boys belonging to South Australia,
who had been with Eyre for some time previously. These little boys
shot Baxter and robbed the camp of nearly all the food and ammunition
it contained, and then, while Eyre was running up from the horses to
where Baxter lay, decamped into the bush and were only seen the
following morning, but never afterwards. One other and older boy, a
native of Albany, whither Eyre was bound, now alone remained. Eyre and
this boy (Wylie) now pushed on in a starving condition, living upon
dead fish or anything they could find for several weeks, and never
could have reached the Sound had they not, by almost a miracle, fallen
in with a French whaling schooner when nearly 300 miles had yet to be
traversed. The captain, who was an Englishman named Rossiter, treated
them most handsomely; he took them on board for a month while their
horses recruited on shore--for this was a watering place of
Flinders--he then completely refitted them with every necessary before
he would allow them to depart. Eyre in gratitude called the place
Rossiter Bay, but it seems to have been prophetically christened
previously by the ubiquitous Flinders, under the name of Lucky Bay.
Nearly all the watering places visited by Eyre consisted of the
drainage from great accumulations of pure white sand or hummocks,
which were previously discovered by the Investigator; as Flinders
himself might well have been called. The most peculiar of these
features is the patch at what Flinders called the head of the Great
Australian Bight; these sandhills rise to an elevation of several
hundred feet, the prevailing southerly winds causing them to slope
gradually from the south, while the northern face is precipitous. In
moonlight I have seen these sandhills, a few miles away, shining like
snowy mountains, being refracted to an unnatural altitude by the
bright moonlight. Fortunate indeed it was for Eyre that such relief
was afforded him; he was unable to penetrate at all into the interior,
and he brought back no information of the character and nature of the
country inland. I am the only traveller who has explored that part of
the interior, but of this more hereafter.

About this time Strezletki and McMillan, both from New South Wales,
explored the region now the easternmost part of the colony of
Victoria, which Strezletki called Gipp's Land. These two explorers
were rivals, and both, it seems, claimed to have been first in that
field.

Next on the list of explorers comes Ludwig Leichhardt, a surgeon, a
botanist, and an eager seeker after fame in the Australian field of
discovery, and whose memory all must revere. He successfully conducted
an expedition from Moreton Bay to the Port Essington of King--on the
northern coast--by which he made known the geographical features of a
great part of what is now Queensland, the capital being Brisbane at
Moreton Bay. A settlement had been established at Port Essington by
the Government of New South Wales, to which colony the whole territory
then belonged. At this settlement, as being the only point of relief
after eighteen months of travel, Leichhardt and his exhausted party
arrived. The settlement was a military and penal one, but was
ultimately abandoned. It is now a cattle station in the northern
territory division of South Australia, and belongs to some gentlemen
in Adelaide.

Of Leichhardt's sad fate in the interior of Australia no tidings have
ever been heard. On this fatal journey, which occurred in 1848, he
undertook the too gigantic task of crossing Australia from east to
west, that is to say, from Moreton Bay to Swan River. Even at that
period, however, the eastern interior was not all entirely unknown, as
Mitchell's Victoria River or Barcoo, and the Cooper's and Eyre's
Creeks of Sturt had already been discovered. The last-named
watercourse lay nearly 1000 miles from the eastern coast, in latitude
25 degrees south, and it is reasonable to suppose that to such a point
Leichhardt would naturally direct his course--indeed in what was
probably his last letter, addressed to a friend, he mentions this
watercourse as a desirable point to make for upon his new attempt. But
where his wanderings ended, and where the catastrophe that closed his
own and his companions' lives occurred, no tongue can tell. After he
finally left the furthest outlying settlements at the Mount Abundance
station, he, like the lost Pleiad, was seen on earth no more. How
could he have died and where? ah, where indeed? I who have wandered
into and returned alive from the curious regions he attempted and died
to explore, have unfortunately never come across a single record or
any remains or traces of those long lost but unforgotten braves.
Leichhardt originally started on his last sad venture with a party of
eight, including one if not two native black boys. Owing, however, to
some disagreement, the whole party returned to the starting point, but
being reorganised it started again with the same number of members.
There were about twenty head of bullocks broken in to carry
pack-loads; this was an ordinary custom in those early days of
Australian settlement. Leichhardt also had two horses and five or six
mules: this outfit was mostly contributed by the settlers who gave,
some flour, some bullocks, some money, firearms, gear, etc., and some
gave sheep and goats; he had about a hundred of the latter. The packed
bullocks were taken to supply the party with beef, in the meantime
carrying the expedition stores. The bullocks' pack-saddles were huge,
ungainly frames of wood fastened with iron-work, rings, etc.

Shortly after the expedition made a second start, two or three of the
members again seceded, and returned to the settlements, while
Leichhardt and his remaining band pushed farther and farther to the
west.

Although the eastern half of the continent is now inhabited, though
thinly, no traces of any kind, except two or three branded trees in
the valley of the Cooper, have ever been found. My belief is that the
only cause to be assigned for their destruction is summed up in the
dread word "flood." They were so far traced into the valley of the
Cooper; this creek, which has a very lengthy course, ends in Lake
Eyre, one of the salt depressions which baffled that explorer. A point
on the southern shore is now known as Eyre's Lookout.

The Cooper is known in times of flood to reach a width of between
forty and fifty miles, the whole valley being inundated. Floods may
surround a traveller while not a drop of local rain may fall, and had
the members of this expedition perished in any other way, some remains
of iron pack-saddle frames, horns, bones, skulls, firearms, and other
articles must have been found by the native inhabitants who occupied
the region, and would long ago have been pointed out by the aborigines
to the next comers who invaded their territories. The length of time
that animals' bones might remain intact in the open air in Australia
is exemplified by the fact that in 1870, John Forrest found the skull
of a horse in one of Eyre's camps on the cliffs of the south coast
thirty years after it was left there by Eyre. Forrest carried the
skull to Adelaide. I argue, therefore, that if Leichhardt's animals
and equipment had not been buried by a flood, some remains must have
been since found, for it is impossible, if such things were above
ground that they could escape the lynx-like glances of Australian
aboriginals, whose wonderful visual powers are unsurpassed among
mankind. Everybody and everything must have been swallowed in a
cataclysm and buried deep and sure in the mud and slime of a flood.

The New South Wales Government made praiseworthy efforts to rescue the
missing traveller. About a year after Leichhardt visited Port
Essington, the Government abandoned the settlement, and the prevailing
opinion in the colony of New South Wales at that time was, that
Leichhardt had not been able to reach Eyre's Creek, but had been
forced up north, from his intended route, the inland-sea theory still
prevailing, and that he had probably returned to the old settlement
for relief. Therefore, when he had been absent two years, the
Government despatched a schooner to the abandoned place. The master of
the vessel saw several of the half-civilised natives, who well
remembered Leichhardt's arrival there, but he had not returned. The
natives promised the master to take the greatest care of him should he
again appear, but it is needless to say he was seen no more. The
Government were very solicitous about him, and when he had been absent
four years, Mr. Hovendon Heley was sent away with an outfit of
pack-horses and six or seven men, to endeavour to trace him. This
expedition seems to have wandered about for several months, and
discovered, as Mr. Heley states, two marked trees branded exactly
alike, namely L over XVA, and each spot where these existed is
minutely described. There was at each, a water-hole, upon the bank of
which the camp was situated; at each camp a marked tree was found
branded alike; at each, the frame of a tent was left standing; at
each, some logs had been laid down to place the stores and keep them
from damp. The two places as described appear so identical that it
seems impossible to think otherwise than that Heley and his party
arrived twice at the same place without knowing it. The tree or trees
were found on a watercourse, or courses, near the head of the Warrego
River, in Queensland. The above was all the information gained by this
expedition. A subsequent search expedition was sent out in 1858, under
Augustus Gregory; this I shall place in its chronological order.
Kennedy, a companion of Sir Thomas Mitchell into Tropical Australia in
1845, next enters the field. He went to trace Mitchell's Victoria
River or Barcoo, but finding it turned southwards and broke into many
channels, he abandoned it, and on his return journey discovered the
Warrego River, which may be termed the Murrumbidgee of Queensland. On
a second expedition, in 1848, Kennedy started from Moreton Bay to
penetrate and explore the country of the long peninsula, which runs up
northward between the Gulf of Carpentaria and the Pacific Ocean, and
ends at Cape York, the northernmost point of Australia in Torres
Straits. From this disastrous expedition he never returned. He was
starved, ill, fatigued, hunted by remorseless aborigines for days, and
finally speared to death by the natives of Cape York, when almost
within sight of his goal, where a vessel was waiting to succour him
and all his party. Only a black boy named Jacky Jacky was with him.
After Kennedy's death Jacky buried all his papers in a hollow tree,
and for a couple of days he eluded his pursuers, until, reaching the
spot where his master had told him the vessel would be, he ran yelling
down to the beach, followed by a crowd of murderous savages. By the
luckiest chance a boat happened to be at the beach, and the officers
and crew rescued the boy. The following day a party led by Jacky
returned to where poor Kennedy lay, and they buried him. They obtained
his books and maps from the tree where Jacky had hidden them. The
narrative of this expedition is heart-rending. Of the whole number of
the whites, namely seven, two only were rescued by the vessel at a
place where Kennedy had formed a depot on the coast, and left four
men.

With Captain Roe, a companion of King's, with whom he was speared and
nearly killed by the natives of Goulburn Island, in 1820, and who
afterwards became Surveyor-General of the colony of Western Australia,
the list of Australia's early explorers may be said to close, although
I should remark that Augustus Gregory was a West Australian explorer
as early as the year 1846. Captain Roe conducted the most extensive
inland exploration of Western Australia at that day, in 1848. No works
of fiction can excel, or indeed equal, in romantic and heart-stirring
interest the volumes, worthy to be written in letters of gold, which
record the deeds and the sufferings of these noble toilers in the dim
and distant field of discovery afforded by the Australasian continent
and its vast islands. It would be well if those works were read by the
present generation as eagerly as the imaginary tales of adventure
which, while they appeal to no real sentiment, and convey no solid
information, cannot compete for a moment with those sublime records of
what has been dared, done, and suffered, at the call of duty, and for
the sake of human interests by men who have really lived and died. I
do not say that all works of fiction are entirely without interest to
the human imagination, or that writers of some of these works are not
clever, for in one sense they certainly are, and that is, in only
writing of horrors that never occurred, without going through the
preliminary agony of a practical realisation of the dangers they so
graphically describe, and from which, perhaps, they might be the very
first to flee, though their heroes are made to appear nothing less
than demigods. Strange as it may appear, it seems because the tales of
Australian travel and self-devotion are true, that they attract but
little notice, for were the narratives of the explorers NOT true we
might become the most renowned novelists the world has ever known.
Again, Australian geography, as explained in the works of Australian
exploration, might be called an unlearned study. Let me ask how many
boys out of a hundred in Australia, or England either, have ever read
Sturt or Mitchell, Eyre, Leichhardt, Grey, or Stuart. It is possible a
few may have read Cook's voyages, because they appear more national,
but who has read Flinders, King, or Stokes? Is it because these
narratives are Australian and true that they are not worthy of
attention?

Having well-nigh exhausted the list of the early explorers in
Australia, it is necessary now to turn to a more modern school. I must
admit that in the works of this second section, with a few exceptions,
such stirring narratives as those of the older travellers cannot be
found. Nevertheless, considerable interest must still attach to them,
as they in reality carry on the burning torch which will not be
consumed until by its light the whole of Australia stands revealed.

The modern explorers are of a different class, and perhaps of one not
so high as their predecessors. By this remark I do not mean anything
invidious, and if any of the moderns are correctly to be classed with
the ancients, the Brothers Gregory must be spoken of next, as being
the fittest to head a secondary list. Augustus Gregory was in the West
Australian field of discovery in 1846. He was a great mechanical, as
well as a geographical, discoverer, for to him we are indebted for our
modern horses' pack-saddles in lieu of the dreadful old English
sumpter horse furniture that went by that name; he also invented a new
kind of compass known as Gregory's Patent, unequalled for steering on
horseback, and through dense scrubs where an ordinary compass would be
almost useless, while steering on camels in dense scrubs, on a given
bearing, without a Gregory would be next to impossible; it would be
far easier indeed, if not absolutely necessary, to walk and lead them,
which has to be done in almost all camel countries.

In 1854 Austin made a lengthened journey to the east and northwards,
from the old settled places of Western Australia, and in 1856 Augustus
Gregory conducted the North Australian Expedition, fitted out under
the auspices of the Royal Geographical Society of London. Landing at
Stokes's Treachery Bay, Gregory and his brother Frank explored
Stokes's Victoria River to its sources, and found another watercourse,
whose waters, running inland, somewhat revived the old theory of the
inland sea. Upon tracing this river, which he named Sturt's Creek,
after the father of Australian exploration, it was found to exhaust
itself in a circular basin, which was named Termination Lake.
Retracing the creek to where the depot was situated, the party
travelled across a stretch of unknown country for some two hundred
miles, and striking Leichhardt's Port Essington track on Leichhardt's
Roper River, his route was followed too closely for hundreds of miles
until civilisation was reached. My friend Baron von Mueller
accompanied this expedition as botanist, naturalist, surgeon and
physician.

Soon after his return from his northern expedition, Gregory was
despatched in 1858 by the Government of New South Wales to search
again for the lost explorer Leichhardt, who had then been missing ten
years. This expedition resulted in little or nothing, as far as its
main object was concerned, one or two trees, marked L, on the Barcoo
and lower end of the Thompson, was all it discovered; but,
geographically, it settled the question of the course of the Barcoo,
or Mitchell's Victoria, which Gregory followed past Kennedy's farthest
point, and traced until he found it identical with Sturt's Cooper's
Creek. He described it as being of enormous width in times of flood,
and two of Sturt's horses, abandoned since 1845, were seen but left
uncaptured. Sturt's Strezletki Creek in South Australian territory was
then followed. This peculiar watercourse branches out from the Cooper
and runs in a south-south-west direction. It brought Gregory safely to
the northern settlements of South Australia. The fruitless search for
it, however, was one of the main causes of the death of Burke and
Wills in 1861. This was Gregory's final attempt; he accepted the
position of Surveyor-General of Queensland, and his labours as an
explorer terminated. His journals are characterised by a brevity that
is not the soul of wit, he appearing to grudge to others the
information he had obtained at the expense of great endurance,
hardihood, knowledge, and judgment. Gregory was probably the closest
observer of all the explorers, except Mitchell, and an advanced
geologist.

In 1858 a new aspirant for geographical honours appeared on the field
in the person of John McDouall Stuart, of South Australia, who, as
before mentioned, had formerly been a member of Captain Sturt's
Central Australian expedition in 1843-5 as draftsman and surveyor.
Stuart's object was to cross the continent, almost in its greatest
width, from south to north; and this he eventually accomplished. After
three attempts he finally reached the north coast in 1862, his rival
Burke having been the first to do so. Stuart might have been first,
but he seems to have under-valued his rival, and wasted time in
returning and refitting when he might have performed the feat in two
if not one journey; for he discovered a well-watered country the whole
way, and his route is now mainly the South Australian Transcontinental
Telegraph Line, though it must be remembered that Stuart had something
like fifteen hundred miles of unknown country in front of him to
explore, while Burke and Wills had scarcely six. Stuart also conducted
some minor explorations before he undertook his greater one. He and
McKinlay were South Australia's heroes, and are still venerated there
accordingly. He died in England not long after the completion of his
last expedition.

We now come to probably the most melancholy episode in the long
history of Australian exploration, relating to the fate of Burke and
Wills. The people and Government of the colony of Victoria determined
to despatch an expedition to explore Central Australia, from Sturt's
Eyre's Creek to the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria at the mouth of
the Albert River of Stokes's, a distance in a straight line of not
more than six hundred miles; and as everything that Victoria
undertakes must always be on the grandest scale, so was this. One
colonist gave 1000 pounds; 4000 pounds more was subscribed, and then
the Government took the matter in hand to fit out the Victorian
Exploring Expedition. Camels were specially imported from India, and
everything was done to ensure success; when I say everything, I mean
all but the principal thing--the leader was the wrong man. He knew
nothing of bush life or bushmanship, navigation, or any art of travel.
Robert O'Hara Burke was brave, no doubt, but so hopelessly ignorant of
what he was undertaking, that it would have been the greatest wonder
if he had returned alive to civilisation. He was accompanied by a
young man named Wills as surveyor and observer; he alone kept a diary,
and from his own statements therein he was frequently more than a
hundred miles out of his reckoning. That, however, did not cause his
or Burke's death; what really did so was bad management. The money
this expedition cost, variously estimated at from 40,000 to 60,000
pounds, was almost thrown away, for the map of the route of the
expedition was incorrect and unreliable, and Wills's journal of no
geographical value, except that it showed they had no difficulty with
regard to water. The expedition was, however, successful in so far
that Burke crossed Australia from south to north before Stuart, and
was the first traveller who had done so. Burke and Wills both died
upon Cooper's Creek after their return from Carpentaria upon the field
of their renown. Charles Gray, one of the party, died, or was killed,
a day or two before returning thither, and John King, the sole
survivor, was rescued by Alfred Howitt. Burke's and Stuart's lines of
travel, though both pushing from south to north, were separated by a
distance of over 400 miles in longitude. These travellers, or heroes I
suppose I ought to call them, were neither explorers nor bushmen, but
they were brave and undaunted, and they died in the cause they had
undertaken.

When it became certain in Melbourne that some mishap must have
occurred to these adventurers, Victoria, South Australia, and
Queensland each sent out relief parties. South Australia sent John
McKinlay, who found Gray's grave, and afterwards made a long
exploration to Carpentaria, where, not finding any vessel as he
expected, he had an arduous struggle to reach a Queensland cattle
station near Port Dennison on the eastern coast. Queensland sent
Landsborough by sea to Carpentaria, where he was landed and left to
live or die as he might, though of course he had a proper equipment of
horses, men, and gear. He followed up the Flinders River of Stokes,
had a fine country to traverse; got on to the head of the Warrego, and
finally on to the Darling River in New South Wales. He came across no
traces whatever of Burke. Victoria sent a relief expedition under
Walker, with several Queensland black troopers. Walker, crossing the
lower Barcoo, found a tree of Leichhardt's marked L, being the most
westerly known. Walker arrived at Carpentaria without seeing any
traces of the missing Burke and Wills; but at the mouth of the Albert
River met the master of the vessel that had conveyed Landsborough; the
master had seen or heard nothing of Burke. Another expedition fitted
out by Victoria, and called the Victorian Contingent Relief
Expedition, was placed under the command of Alfred Howitt in 1861. At
this time a friend of mine, named Conn, and I were out exploring for
pastoral runs, and were in retreat upon the Darling, when we met
Howitt going out. When farther north I repeatedly urged my companion
to visit the Cooper, from which we were then only eighty or ninety
miles away, in vain. I urged how we might succour some, if not all, of
the wanderers. Had we done so we should have found and rescued King,
and we might have been in time to save Burke and Wills also; but Conn
would not agree to go. It is true we were nearly starved as it was,
and might have been entirely starved had we gone there, but by good
fortune we met and shot a stray bullock that had wandered from the
Darling, and this happy chance saved our lives. I may here remark that
poor Conn and two other exploring comrades of those days, named
Curlewis and McCulloch, were all subsequently, not only killed but
partly eaten by the wild natives of Australia--Conn in a place near
Cooktown on the Queensland coast, and Curlewis and McCulloch on the
Paroo River in New South Wales in 1862. When we were together we had
many very narrow escapes from death, and I have had several similar
experiences since those days. Howitt on his arrival at Cooper's Creek
was informed by the natives that a white man was alive with them, and
thus John King, the sole survivor, was rescued.

Between 1860-65 several short expeditions were carried on in Western
Australia by Frank Gregory, Lefroy, Robinson, and Hunt; while upon the
eastern side of Australia, the Brothers Jardine successfully explored
and took a mob of cattle through the region that proved so fatal to
Kennedy and his companions in 1848. The Jardines traversed a route
more westerly than Kennedy's along the eastern shores of the Gulf of
Carpentaria to Cape York.

In 1865, Duncan McIntyre, while on the Flinders River of Stokes and
near the Gulf of Carpentaria, into which it flows, was shown by a
white shepherd at an out sheep station, a tree on which the letter L
was cut. This no doubt was one of Landsborough's marks, or if it was
really carved by Leichhardt, it was done upon his journey to Port
Essington in 1844, when he crossed and encamped upon the Flinders.
Mcintyre reported by telegraph to Melbourne that he had found traces
of Leichhardt, whereupon Baron von Mueller and a committee of ladies
in Melbourne raised a fund of nearly 4000 pounds, and an expedition
called "The Ladies' Leichhardt Search Expedition," whose noble object
was to trace and find some records or mementoes, if not the persons,
and discover the last resting-place of the unfortunate traveller and
his companions, was placed under McIntyre's command. About sixty
horses and sixteen camels were obtained for this attempt. The less
said about this splendid but ill-starred effort the better.
Indignation is a mild term to apply to our feelings towards the man
who caused the ruin of so generous an undertaking. Everything that its
promoters could do to ensure its success they did, and it deserved a
better fate, for a brilliant issue might have been obtained, if not by
the discovery of the lost explorers, at least by a geographical
result, as the whole of the western half of Australia lay unexplored
before it. The work, trouble, anxiety, and expense that Baron von
Mueller went through to start this expedition none but the initiated
can ever know. It was ruined before it even entered the field of its
labours, for, like Burke's and Wills's expedition, it was
unfortunately placed under the command of the wrong man. The collapse
of the expedition occurred in this wise. A certain doctor was
appointed surgeon and second in command, the party consisting of about
ten men, including two Afghans with the camels, and one young black
boy. Their encampment was now at a water-hole in the Paroo, where
Curlewis and McCulloch had been killed, in New South Wales. The
previous year McIntyre had visited a water-hole in the Cooper some
seventy-four or seventy-five miles from his camp on the Paroo, and now
ordered the whole of his heavily-laden beasts and all the men to start
for the distant spot. The few appliances they had for carrying water
soon became emptied. About the middle of the third day, upon arrival
at the wished-for relief, to their horror and surprise they found the
water-hole was dry--by no means an unusual thing in Australian travel.
The horses were already nearly dead; McIntyre, without attempting to
search either up or down the channel of the watercourse, immediately
ordered a retreat to the last water in the Paroo. After proceeding a
few miles he left the horses and white men, seven in number, and went
on ahead with the camels, the Afghans and the black boy, saying he
would return with water for the others as soon as he could. His
brother was one of the party left behind. Almost as soon as McIntyre's
back was turned, the doctor said to the men something to the effect
that they were abandoned to die of thirst, there not being a drop of
water remaining, and that he knew in which packs the medical brandy
was stowed, certain bags being marked to indicate them. He then added,
"Boys, we must help ourselves! the Leichhardt Search Expedition is a
failure; follow me, and I'll get you something to drink." Taking a
knife, he ripped open the marked bags while still on the choking
horses' backs, and extracted the only six bottles there were. One
white man named Barnes, to whom all honour, refused to touch the
brandy, the others poured the boiling alcohol down their parched and
burning throats, and a wild scene of frenzy, as described by Barnes,
ensued. In the meanwhile the unfortunate packhorses wandered away,
loaded as they were, and died in thirst and agony, weighed down by
their unremoved packs, none of which were ever recovered. Thus all the
food supply and nearly all the carrying power of the expedition was
lost; the only wonder was that none of these wretches actually died at
the spot, although I heard some of them died soon after. The return of
McIntyre and the camels loaded with water saved their lives at the
time; but what was his chagrin and surprise to find the party just
where he had left them, nearly dead, most of them delirious, with all
the horses gone, when he had expected to meet them so much nearer the
Paroo. In consequence of the state these men or animals were in, they
had to be carried on the camels, and it was impossible to go in search
of the horses; thus all was lost. This event crushed the expedition.
Mcintyre obtained a few more horses, pushed across to the Flinders
again, became attacked with fever, and died. Thus the "Ladies'
Leichhardt Search Expedition" entirely fell through. The camels were
subsequently claimed by McIntyre's brother for the cost of grazing
them, he having been carried by them to Carpentaria, where he selected
an excellent pastoral property, became rich, and died. It was the same
doctor that got into trouble with the Queensland Government concerning
the kidnapping of some islanders in the South Seas, and narrowly
escaped severe, if not capital punishment.

In 1866, Mr. Cowle conducted an expedition from Roebourne, near Nicol
Bay, on the West Coast, for four or five hundred miles to the Fitzroy
River, discovered by Wickham, at the bottom of King's Sound.

In 1869, a report having spread in Western Australia of the massacre
of some white people by the natives somewhere to the eastwards of
Champion Bay, on the west coast, the rumour was supposed to relate to
Leichhardt and his party; and upon the representations of Baron von
Mueller to the West Australian Government, a young surveyor named John
Forrest was despatched to investigate the truth of the story. This
expedition penetrated some distance to the eastwards, but could
discover no traces of the lost, or indeed anything appertaining to any
travellers whatever.

In 1869-70, John Forrest, accompanied by his brother Alexander, was
again equipped by the West Australian Government for an exploration
eastwards, with the object of endeavouring to reach the South
Australian settlements by a new route inland. Forrest, however,
followed Eyre's track of 1840-1, along the shores of the Great
Australian Bight, and may be said to have made no exploration at all,
as he did not on any occasion penetrate inland more than about thirty
miles from the coast. At an old encampment Forrest found the skull of
one of Eyre's horses, which had been lying there for thirty years.
This trophy he brought with him to Adelaide.

The following year, Alexander Forrest conducted an expedition to the
eastwards, from the West Australian settlements; but only succeeded in
pushing a few miles beyond Hunt and Lefroy's furthest point in 1864.

What I have written above is an outline of the history of discovery
and exploration in Australia when I first took the field in the year
1872; and though it may not perhaps be called, as Tennyson says, one
of the fairy tales of science, still it is certainly one of the long
results of time. I have conducted five public expeditions and several
private ones. The latter will not be recorded in these volumes, not
because there were no incidents of interest, but because they were
conducted, in connection with other persons, for entirely pastoral
objects. Experiences of hunger, thirst, and attacks by hostile natives
during those undertakings relieved them of any monotony they might
otherwise display. It is, however, to my public expeditions that I
shall now confine my narrative.

The wild charm and exciting desire that induce an individual to
undertake the arduous tasks that lie before an explorer, and the
pleasure and delight of visiting new and totally unknown places, are
only whetted by his first attempt, especially when he is constrained
to admit that his first attempt had not resulted in his carrying out
its objects.

My first and second expeditions were conducted entirely with horses;
in all my after journeys I had the services of camels, those wonderful
ships of the desert, without whose aid the travels and adventures
which are subsequently recorded could not possibly have been achieved,
nor should I now be alive, as Byron says, to write so poor a tale,
this lowly lay of mine. In my first and second expeditions, the object
I had in view was to push across the continent, from different
starting points, upon the South Australian Transcontinental Telegraph
Line, to the settled districts of Western Australia. My first
expedition was fitted out entirely by Baron von Mueller, my
brother-in-law, Mr. G.D. Gill, and myself. I was joined in this
enterprise by a young gentleman, named Samuel Carmichael, whom I met
in Melbourne, and who also contributed his share towards the
undertaking. The furthest point reached on this journey was about 300
miles from my starting point. On my return, upon reaching the
Charlotte Waters Telegraph Station, in latitude 25 degrees 55' and
longitude 135 degrees I met Colonel Warburton and his son, whom I had
known before. These gentlemen informed me, to my great astonishment,
they were about to undertake an exploring expedition to Western
Australia, for two well-known capitalists of South Australia, namely
the Honourable Sir Thomas Elder and Captain Hughes. I was also
informed that a South Australian Government expedition, for the same
purpose, was just in advance of them, under the command of Mr. William
C. Gosse. This information took me greatly by surprise, though perhaps
an explorer should not admit such a feeling. I had just returned from
an attempt of the same kind, beaten and disappointed. I felt if ever I
took the field again, against two such formidable rivals as were now
about to attempt what I had failed in, both being supplied with camels
by Sir Thomas Elder, my chances of competing with them would be small
indeed, as I could only command horses, and was not then known to Sir
Thomas Elder, the only gentleman in Australia who possessed camels.

The fact of two expeditions starting away simultaneously, almost as
soon as I had turned my back upon civilisation, showed me at once that
my attempt, I being regarded as a Victorian, had roused the people and
Government of South Australia to the importance of the question which
I was the first to endeavour to solve--namely, the exploration of the
unknown interior, and the possibility of discovering an overland route
for stock through Central Australia, to the settlements upon the
western coast. This, I may remark, had been the dream of all
Australian explorers from the time of Eyre and Leichhardt down to my
own time. It also showed that South Australia had no desire to be
beaten again (Burke and Stuart.), and in her own territories, by
"worthless Melbourne's pulling child;" (hence the two new expeditions
arose). Immediately upon my return being made known by telegram to my
friend Baron von Mueller, he set to work, and with unwearied exertion
soon obtained a new fund from several wealthy gentlemen in the rival
colony of Victoria. In consideration of the information I had afforded
by my late effort, the Government of South Australia supplemented this
fund by the munificent subsidy of 250 pounds, provided I EXPENDED the
money in fresh explorations, and supplied to the Government, at the
termination of my journey, a copy of the map and journal of my
expedition. My poverty, and not my will, consented to accept so mean a
gift. As a new, though limited fund was now placed at my disposal, I
had no inclination to decline a fresh attempt, and thus my second
expedition was undertaken; and such despatch was used by Baron Mueller
and myself, that I was again in the field, with horses only, not many
weeks later than my rivals.

On this journey I was accompanied and seconded by Mr. William Henry
Tietkens. We had both been scholars at Christ's Hospital in London,
though many years apart. Of the toils and adventures of my second
expedition the readers of my book must form their own opinion; and
although I was again unsuccessful in carrying out my object, and the
expedition ended in the death of one member, and in misfortune and
starvation to the others, still I have been told by a few partial
friends that it was really a splendid failure. On that expedition I
explored a line of nearly 700 miles of previously unknown country, in
a straight line from my starting point.

During my first and second expeditions I had been fortunate in the
discovery of large areas of mountain country, permanently watered and
beautifully grassed, and, as spaces of enormous extent still remained
to be explored, I decided to continue in the field, provided I could
secure the use of camels. These volumes will contain the narratives of
my public explorations. In the preface to this work I have given an
outline of the physical and colonial divisions of Australia, so that
my reader may eventually follow me, albeit in imagination only, to the
starting points of my journeys, and into the field of my labours also.


PREFACE.

The Island Continent of Australia contains an area of about three
millions of square miles, it being, so to say, an elliptically-shaped
mass about 2500 miles in length from east to west, and 2000 from north
to south. The degrees of latitude and longitude it occupies will be
shown by the map accompanying these volumes.

The continent is divided into five separate colonies, whose respective
capitals are situated several hundreds of miles apart. The oldest
colony is New South Wales. The largest in area is Western Australia,
next comes South Australia; then Queensland, New South Wales, and
lastly Victoria, which, though the smallest in area, is now the first
in importance among the group. It was no wonder that Mitchell, the
Surveyor-General of New South Wales, designated that region "Australia
Felix."

It may be strange, but it is no less true, that there is almost as
great a difference between the fiscal laws and governments of the
various Australian Colonies as between those of foreign States in
Europe--the only thing in common being the language and the money of
the British Empire. Although however, they agree to differ amongst
themselves, there can be no doubt of the loyalty of the group, as a
whole, to their parent nation. I shall go no further into this matter,
as, although English enough, it is foreign to my subject. I shall
treat more especially of the colony or colonies within whose
boundaries my travels led me, and shall begin with South Australia,
where my first expedition was conducted.

South Australia includes a vast extent of country called the Northern
Territory, which must become in time a separate colony, as it extends
from the 26th parallel of latitude, embracing the whole country
northwards to the Indian Ocean at the 11th parallel. South Australia
possesses one advantage over the other colonies, from the geographical
fact of her oblong territory extending, so to speak, exactly in the
middle right across the continent from the Southern to the Indian
Ocean. The dimensions of the colony are in extreme length over 1800
miles, by a breadth of nearly 700, and almost through the centre of
this vast region the South Australian Transcontinental Telegraph line
runs from Adelaide, via Port Augusta, to Port Darwin.

At the time I undertook my first expedition in 1872, this extensive
work had just been completed, and it may be said to divide the
continent into halves, which, for the purpose I then had in view,
might be termed the explored and the unexplored halves. For several
years previous to my taking the field, I had desired to be the first
to penetrate into this unknown region, where, for a thousand miles in
a straight line, no white man's foot had ever wandered, or, if it had,
its owner had never brought it back, nor told the tale. I had ever
been a delighted student of the narratives of voyages and discoveries,
from Robinson Crusoe to Anson and Cook, and the exploits on land in
the brilliant accounts given by Sturt, Mitchell, Eyre, Grey,
Leichhardt, and Kennedy, constantly excited my imagination, as my own
travels may do that of future rovers, and continually spurred me on to
emulate them in the pursuit they had so eminently graced.

My object, as indeed had been Leichhardt's, was to force my way across
the thousand miles that lay untrodden and unknown, between the South
Australian telegraph line and the settlements upon the Swan River.
What hopes I formed, what aspirations came of what might be my
fortune, for I trust it will be believed that an explorer may be an
imaginative as well as a practical creature, to discover in that
unknown space. Here let me remark that the exploration of 1000 miles
in Australia is equal to 10,000 in any other part of the earth's
surface, always excepting Arctic and Antarctic travels.

There was room for snowy mountains, an inland sea, ancient river, and
palmy plain, for races of new kinds of men inhabiting a new and
odorous land, for fields of gold and golcondas of gems, for a new
flora and a new fauna, and, above all the rest combined, there was
room for me! Many well-meaning friends tried to dissuade me
altogether, and endeavoured to instil into my mind that what I so
ardently wished to attempt was simply deliberate suicide, and to
persuade me of the truth of the poetic line, that the sad eye of
experience sees beneath youth's radiant glow, so that, like Falstaff,
I was only partly consoled by the remark that they hate us youth. But
in spite of their experience, and probably on account of youth's
radiant glow, I was not to be deterred, however, and at last I met
with Baron von Mueller, who, himself an explorer with the two
Gregorys, has always had the cause of Australian exploration at heart,
and he assisting, I was at length enabled to take the field. Baron
Mueller and I had consulted, and it was deemed advisable that I should
make a peculiar feature near the Finke river, called Chambers' Pillar,
my point of departure for the west. This Pillar is situated in
latitude 24 degrees 55' and longitude 133 degrees 50', being 1200
miles from Melbourne in a straight line, over which distance Mr.
Carmichael, a black boy, and I travelled. In the course of our travels
from Melbourne to the starting point, we reached Port Augusta, a
seaport though an inland town, at the head of Spencer's Gulf in South
Australia, first visited by the Investigator in 1803, and where, a few
miles to the eastwards, a fine bold range of mountains runs along for
scores of miles and bears the gallant navigator's name. A railway line
of 250 miles now connects Port Augusta with Adelaide. To this town was
the first section of the Transcontinental telegraph line carried; and
it was in those days the last place where I could get stores for my
expedition. Various telegraph stations are erected along the line, the
average distance between each being from 150 to 200 miles. There were
eleven stations between Port Augusta and Port Darwin. A railway is now
completed as far as the Peake Telegraph Station, about 450 miles
north-westwards from Port Augusta along the telegraph line towards
Port Darwin, to which it will no doubt be carried before many years
elapse.

From Port Augusta the Flinders range runs almost northerly for nearly
200 miles, throwing out numerous creeks (I must here remark that
throughout this work the word creek will often occur. This is not to
be considered in its English acceptation of an inlet from the sea,
but, no matter how far inland, it means, in Australia a watercourse.),
through rocky pine-clad glens and gorges, these all emptying, in times
of flood, into the salt lake Torrens, that peculiar depression which
baffled Eyre in 1840-1. Captain Frome, the Surveyor-General of the
Colony, dispelled the old horse-shoe-shaped illusion of this feature,
and discovered that there were several similar features instead of
one. As far as the Flinders range extends northwards, the water supply
of the traveller in that region is obtained from its watercourses. The
country beyond, where this long range falls off, continues an
extensive open stony plateau or plain, occasionally intersected with
watercourses, the course of the line of road being west of north. Most
of these watercourses on the plains fall into Lake Eyre, another and
more northerly salt depression. A curious limestone formation now
occurs, and for some hundreds of miles the whole country is open and
studded with what are called mound-springs. These are usually about
fifty feet high, and ornamented on the summit with clumps of tall
reeds or bulrushes. These mounds are natural artesian wells, through
which the water, forced up from below, gushes out over the tops to the
level ground, where it forms little water-channels at which sheep and
cattle can water. Some of these mounds have miniature lakes on their
summits, where people might bathe. The most perfect mound is called
the Blanche Cup, in latitude about 29 degrees 20', and longitude 136
degrees 40'.

The water of some of these springs is fresh and good, the Blanche Cup
is drinkable, but the generality of them have either a mineral salt-
or soda-ish taste; at first their effect is aperient, but afterwards
just the opposite. The water is good enough for animals.

The Honourable Sir Thomas Elder's sheep, cattle, horse, and camel
station, Beltana, is the first telegraph station from Port Augusta,
the distance being 150 miles. The next is at the Strangways Springs,
about 200 miles distant. This station occupies a nearly central
position in this region of mound-springs; it is situated on a low rise
out of the surrounding plain; all around are dozens of these peculiar
mounds. The Messrs. Hogarth and Warren, who own the sheep and cattle
station, have springs with a sufficiently strong flow of water to
spout their wool at shearing time. The next telegraph station beyond
the Strangways is the Peake, distant 100 miles. About twenty miles
northward, or rather north-westward, from the Peake the mound-springs
cease, and the country is watered by large pools in stony watercourses
and creek beds. These pools are generally no more than twelve to
fifteen miles apart. The waters in times of flood run into Lake Eyre,
which receives the Cooper and all the flood waters of West and
South-western Queensland, and all the drainage from the hundred
watercourses of Central South Australia. The chief among the latter is
the huge artery, the Finke, from the north-west.

The Charlotte Waters Station, named after Lady Charlotte Bacon, the
Ianthe of Byron, which was to be my last outpost of civilisation, is a
quadrangular stone building, plastered or painted white, having a
corrugated iron roof, and a courtyard enclosed by the two wings of the
building, having loop-holes in the walls for rifles and musketry, a
cemented water-tank dug under the yard, and tall heavy iron gates to
secure the place from attack by the natives.

I may here relate an occurrence at a station farther up the line,
built upon the same principle. One evening, while the telegraph master
and staff were sitting outside the gates after the heat of the day,
the natives, knowing that the stand of arms was inside the courtyard,
sent some of their warriers to creep unseen inside and slam the gates,
so as to prevent retreat. Then from the outside an attempt to massacre
was made; several whites were speared, some were killed on the spot,
others died soon afterwards, but the greatest wonder was that any at
all escaped.

The establishment at the Charlotte Waters stands on a large grassy and
pebbly plain, bounded on the north by a watercourse half a mile away.
The natives here have always been peaceful, and never displayed any
hostility to the whites. From this last station I made my way to
Chambers' Pillar, which was to be my actual starting-point for the
west.


BOOK 1.


CHAPTER 1.1. FROM 4TH TO 30TH AUGUST, 1872.

The party.
Port Augusta.
The road.
The Peake.
Stony plateau.
Telegraph station.
Natives formerly hostile.
A new member.
Leave the Peake.
Black boy deserts.
Reach the Charlotte Waters Station.
Natives' account of other natives.
Leave last outpost.
Reach the Finke.
A Government party.
A ride westward.
End of the stony plateau.
A sandhill region.
Chambers' Pillar.
The Moloch horridus.
Thermometer 18 degrees.
The Finke.
Johnstone's range.
A night alarm.
Beautiful trees.
Wild ducks.
A tributary.
High dark hill.
Country rises in altitude.
Very high sandhills.
Quicksands.
New ranges.
A brush ford.
New pigeon.
Pointed hill.
A clay pan.
Christopher's Pinnacle.
Chandler's Range.
Another new range.
Sounds of running water.
First natives seen.
Name of the river.
A Central Australian warrior.
Natives burning the country.
Name a new creek.
Ascend a mountain.
Vivid green.
Discover a glen and more mountains.
Hot winds, smoke and ashes.

The personnel of my first expedition into the interior consisted in
the first instance of myself, Mr. Carmichael, and a young black boy. I
intended to engage the services of another white man at the furthest
outpost that I could secure one. From Port Augusta I despatched the
bulk of my stores by a team to the Peake, and made a leisurely
progress up the overland road via Beltana, the Finniss and Strangways
Springs stations. Our stores reached the Peake station before us. This
station was originally called Mount Margaret, but subsequently removed
to the mound-springs near the south bank of the Peake Creek; it was a
cattle station formed by Mr. Phillip Levi of Adelaide. The character
of the country is an open stony plateau, upon which lines of hills or
ranges rise; it is intersected by numerous watercourses, all trending
to Lake Eyre, and was an excellent cattle run. The South Australian
Government erected the telegraph station in the immediate vicinity of
the cattle station. When the cattle station was first formed in 1862
the natives were very numerous and very hostile, but at the time of my
visit, ten years later, they were comparatively civilised. At the
Peake we were enabled to re-shoe all our horses, for the stony road up
from Port Augusta had worn out all that were put on there. I also had
an extra set fitted for each horse, rolled up in calico, and marked
with its name. At the Peake I engaged a young man named Alec Robinson,
who, according to his account, could do everything, and had been
everywhere, who knew the country I was about to explore perfectly
well, and who had frequently met and camped with blacks from the west
coast, and declared we could easily go over there in a few weeks. He
died at one of the telegraph stations a year or two after he left me.
I must say he was very good at cooking, and shoeing horses. I am able
to do these useful works myself, but I do not relish either. I had
brought a light little spring cart with me all the way from Melbourne
to the Peake, which I sold here, and my means of transit from thence
was with pack-horses. After a rather prolonged sojourn at the Peake,
where I received great hospitality from Mr. Blood, of the Telegraph
Department, and from Messrs. Bagot, the owners, and Mr. Conway, the
manager, we departed for the Charlotte.

My little black boy Dick, or, as he used generally to write, and call
himself, Richard Giles Kew, 1872, had been at school at Kew, near
Melbourne. He came to me from Queensland; he had visited Adelaide,
Melbourne, and Sydney, and had been with me for nearly three years,
but his fears of wild natives were terribly excited by what nearly
everybody we met said to him about them. This was not surprising, as
it was usually something to this effect, in bush parlance: "By G--,
young feller, just you look out when you get OUTSIDE! the wild blacks
will [adjective] soon cook you. They'll kill YOU first, you know--they
WILL like to cut out your kidney fat! They'll sneak on yer when yer
goes out after the horses, they'll have yer and eat yer." This being
the burden of the strain continually dinned into the boy's ears, made
him so terrified and nervous the farther we got away from
civilisation, that soon after leaving the Peake, as we were camping
one night with some bullock teams returning south, the same stories
having been told him over again, he at last made up his mind, and told
me he wanted to go back with one of the teamsters; he had hinted about
this before, and both Carmichael and Robinson seemed to be aware of
his intention. Force was useless to detain him; argument was lost on
him, and entreaty I did not attempt, so in the morning we parted. I
shall mention him again by-and-bye. He was a small, very handsome,
light-complexioned, very intelligent, but childish boy, and was
frequently mistaken for a half-caste; he was a splendid rider and
tracker, and knew almost everything. He was a great wit, as one remark
of his will show. In travelling up the country after he had been at
school, we once saw some old deserted native gunyahs, and he said to
me as we rode by, pointing to them, "Gentleman's 'ouse, villa
residence, I s'pose, he's gone to his watering place for the season
p'r'aps." At another time, being at a place called Crowlands, he asked
me why it was called so. I replied pointing to a crow on a tree, "Why,
there's the crow," and stamping with my foot on the ground, "there's
the land;" he immediately said, "Oh, now I know why my country is
called Queensland, because it's land belonging to our Queen." I said,
"Certainly it is;" then he said, "Well, ain't it funny? I never knew
that before." In Melbourne, one day, we were leaning out of a window
overlooking the people continually passing by. Dick said, "What
for,--white fellow always walk about--walk about in town--when he
always rides in the bush?" I said, "Oh, to do their business."
"Business," he asked, "what's that?" I said, "Why, to get money, to be
sure." "Money," he said; "white fellow can't pick up money in the
street."

From the Peake we had only pack-horses and one little Scotch terrier
dog. Dick left us at Hann's Creek, thirty miles from the Peake. On our
road up, about halfway between the Peake and the Charlotte, we crossed
and camped at a large creek which runs into the Finke, called the
Alberga. Here we met a few natives, who were friendly enough, but who
were known to be great thieves, having stolen things from several
bullock drays, and committed other robberies; so we had to keep a
sharp look out upon them and their actions. One of their number, a
young man, could speak English pretty well, and could actually sing
some songs. His most successful effort in that line was the song of
"Jim Crow," and he performed the "turn about and wheel about and do
just so" part of it until he got giddy, or pretended to be; and to get
rid of him and his brethren, we gave them some flour and a smoke of
tobacco, and they departed.

We arrived at the Charlotte Waters station on the 4th of August, 1872;
this was actually my last outpost of civilisation. My companion, Mr.
Carmichael, and I were most kindly welcomed by Mr. Johnstone, the
officer in charge of this depot, and by Mr. Chandler, a gentleman
belonging to a telegraph station farther up the line. In consequence
of their kindness, our stay was lengthened to a week. My horses were
all the better for the short respite, for they were by no means in
good fettle; but the country having been visited by rains, grass was
abundant, and the animals improving. The party consisted only of
myself, Carmichael, and Robinson; I could not now obtain another man
to make up our original number of four. We still had the little dog.
during our stay at the Charlotte I inquired of a number of the natives
for information concerning the region beyond, to the west and
north-west. They often used the words "Larapinta and plenty black
fellow." Of the country to the west they seemed to know more, but it
was very difficult to get positive statements. The gist of their
information was that there were large waters, high mountains, and
plenty, plenty, wild black fellow; they said the wild blacks were very
big and fat, and had hair growing, as some said, all down their backs;
while others asserted that the hair grew all over their bodies, and
that they eat pickaninnies, and sometimes came eastward and killed any
of the members of the Charlotte tribe that they could find, and
carried off all the women they could catch. On the 12th we departed,
and my intended starting point being Chambers' Pillar, upon the Finke
River, I proceeded up the telegraph road as far as the crossing place
of the above-named watercourse, which was sixty miles by the road.

(ILLUSTRATION: CHAMBERS' PILLAR.)

In the evening of the day we encamped there, a Government party, under
the charge of Mr. McMinn, surveyor, and accompanied by Mr. Harley
Bacon, a son of Lady Charlotte Bacon, arrived from the north, and we
had their company at the camp. Close to this crossing-place a large
tributary joins the Finke near the foot of Mount Humphries. On the
following day Mr. McMinn, Mr. Bacon, and I rode up its channel, and at
about twelve miles we found a water-hole and returned. The country
consisted chiefly of open sandhills well grassed. I mentioned
previously that from Port Augusta, northwards and north-westwards, the
whole region consists of an open stony plateau, upon which mountain
ranges stand at various distances; through and from these, a number of
watercourses run, and, on a section of this plateau, nearly 200 miles
in extent, the curious mound-springs exist. This formation, mostly of
limestone, ceases at, or immediately before reaching, the Finke, and
then a formation of heavy red sandhills begins. Next day our friends
departed for the Charlotte, after making me several presents. From Mr.
McMinn I obtained the course and distance of the pillar from our camp,
and travelling on the course given, we crossed the Finke three times,
as it wound about so snake-like across the country. On the 22nd we
encamped upon it, having the pillar in full view.

(ILLUSTRATION: THE Moloch horridus.)

The appearance of this feature I should imagine to be unique. For a
detailed account of it my reader must consult Stuart's report.
Approaching the pillar from the south, the traveller must pass over a
series of red sandhills, covered with some scrubs, and clothed near
the ground with that abominable vegetable production, the so-called
spinifex or porcupine grass--botanically, the Triodia, or Festuca
irritans. The timber on the sandhills near the pillar is nearly all
mulga, a very hard acacia, though a few tall and well-grown
casuarinas--of a kind that is new to me, namely the C.
Decaisneana--are occasionally met. (These trees have almost a
palm-like appearance, and look like huge mops; but they grow in the
driest regions.) On our route Mr. Carmichael brought to me a most
peculiar little lizard, a true native of the soil; its colour was a
yellowish-green; it was armed, or ornamented, at points and joints,
with spines, in a row along its back, sides, and legs; these were
curved, and almost sharp; on the back of its neck was a thick knotty
lump, with a spine at each side, by which I lifted it; its tail was
armed with spines to the point, and was of proportional length to its
body. The lizard was about eight inches in length. Naturalists have
christened this harmless little chameleon the Moloch horridus. I put
the little creature in a pouch, and intended to preserve it, but it
managed to crawl out of its receptacle, and dropped again to its
native sand. I had one of these lizards, as a pet, for months in
Melbourne. It was finally trodden on and died. It used to eat sugar.

By this time we were close to the pillar: its outline was most
imposing. Upon reaching it, I found it to be a columnar structure,
standing upon a pedestal, which is perhaps eighty feet high, and
composed of loose white sandstone, having vast numbers of large blocks
lying about in all directions. From the centre of the pedestal rises
the pillar, composed also of the same kind of rock; at its top, and
for twenty to thirty feet from its summit, the colour of the stone is
red. The column itself must be seventy or eighty feet above the
pedestal. It is split at the top into two points. There it stands, a
vast monument of the geological periods that must have elapsed since
the mountain ridge, of which it was formerly a part, was washed by the
action of old Ocean's waves into mere sandhills at its feet. The stone
is so friable that names can be cut in it to almost any depth with a
pocket-knife: so loose, indeed, is it, that one almost feels alarmed
lest it should fall while he is scratching at its base. In a small
orifice or chamber of the pillar I discovered an opossum asleep, the
first I had seen in this part of the country. We turned our backs upon
this peculiar monument, and left it in its loneliness and its
grandeur--"clothed in white sandstone, mystic, wonderful!"

From hence we travelled nearly west, and in seventeen miles came to
some very high sandhills, at whose feet the river swept. We followed
round them to a convenient spot, and one where our horses could water
without bogging. The bed of the Finke is the most boggy creek-channel
I have ever met. As we had travelled several miles in the morning to
the pillar, and camped eighteen beyond it, it was late in the
afternoon when we encamped. The country we passed over was mostly
scrubby sandhills, covered with porcupine grass. Where we struck the
channel there was a long hole of brine. There was plenty of good grass
on the river flat; and we got some tolerably good water where we fixed
our camp. When we had finished our evening meal, the shades of night
descended upon us, in this our first bivouac in the unknown interior.
By observations of the bright stars Vega and Altair, I found my
latitude was 24 degrees 52' 15"; the night was excessively cold, and
by daylight next morning the thermometer had fallen to 18 degrees. Our
blankets and packs were covered with a thick coating of ice; and tea
left in our pannikins overnight had become solid cakes.

The country here being soft and sandy, we unshod all the horses and
carried the shoes. So far as I could discern with the glasses, the
river channel came from the west, but I decided to go north-west, as I
was sure it would turn more northerly in time; and I dreaded being
caught in a long bend, and having to turn back many miles, or chance
the loss of some or all the horses in a boggy crossing. To the south a
line of hills appeared, where the natives were burning the spinifex in
all directions. These hills had the appearance of red sandstone; and
they had a series of ancient ocean watermarks along their northern
face, traceable for miles. This I called Johnstone's Range. As another
night approached, we could see, to the north, the brilliant flames of
large grass fires, which had only recently been started by some
prowling sons of the soil, upon their becoming aware of our presence
in their domain. The nights now were usually very cold. One night some
wild man or beast must have been prowling around our camp, for my
little dog Monkey exhibited signs of great perturbation for several
hours. We kept awake, listening for some sounds that might give us an
idea of the intruders; and being sure that we heard the tones of human
voices, we got our rifles in readiness. The little dog barked still
more furiously, but the sounds departed: we heard them no more: and
the rest of the night passed in silence--in silence and beautiful
rest.

We had not yet even sighted the Finke, upon my north-west course; but
I determined to continue, and was rewarded by coming suddenly upon it
under the foot of high sandhills. Its course now was a good deal to
the north. The horses being heavily packed, and the spinifex
distressing them so much, we found a convenient spot where the animals
could water without bogging, and camped. Hard by, were some clumps of
the fine-looking casuarinas; they grow to a height of twenty to
twenty-five feet of barrel without a branch, and then spread out to a
fine umbrella top; they flourish out of pure red sand. The large sheet
of water at the camp had wild ducks on it: some of these we shot. The
day was very agreeable, with cool breezes from the north-west. A
tributary joins the Finke here from the west, and a high dark hill
forms its southern embankment: the western horizon is bounded by
broken lines of hills, of no great elevation. As we ascend the river,
the country gradually rises, and we are here about 250 feet above the
level of the Charlotte Waters Station.

Finding the river now trended not only northerly, but even east of
north, we had to go in that direction, passing over some very high
sandhills, where we met the Finke at almost right angles. Although the
country was quite open, it was impossible to see the river channel,
even though fringed with rows of splendid gum-trees, for any distance,
as it became hidden by the high sandhills. I was very reluctant to
cross, on account of the frightfully boggy bed of the creek, but,
rather than travel several miles roundabout, I decided to try it. We
got over, certainly, but to see one's horses and loads sinking bodily
in a mass of quaking quicksand is by no means an agreeable sight, and
it was only by urging the animals on with stock-whips, to prevent them
delaying, that we accomplished the crossing without loss. Our riding
horses got the worst of it, as the bed was so fearfully ploughed up by
the pack-horses ahead of them. The whole bed of this peculiar creek
appears to be a quicksand, and when I say it was nearly a quarter of a
mile wide, its formidable nature will be understood. Here a stream of
slightly brackish water was trickling down the bed in a much narrower
channel, however, than its whole width; and where the water appears
upon the surface, there the bog is most to be apprehended. Sometimes
it runs under one bank, sometimes under the opposite, and again, at
other places the water occupies the mid-channel. A horse may walk upon
apparently firm sand towards the stream, when, without a second's
warning, horse and rider may be engulfed in quicksand; but in other
places, where it is firmer, it will quake for yards all round, and
thus give some slight warning.

Crossing safely, and now having the river on my right hand, we
continued our journey, sighting a continuous range of hills to the
north, which ran east and west, and with the glasses I could see the
river trending towards them. I changed my course for a conspicuous
hill in this new line, which brought me to the river again at right
angles; and, having so successfully crossed in the morning, I decided
to try it again. We descended to the bank, and after great trouble
found a spot firm enough and large enough to allow all the horses to
stand upon it at one time, but we could not find a place where they
could climb the opposite bank, for under it was a long reach of water,
and a quagmire extending for more than a mile on either side. Two of
our riding-horses were badly bogged in trying to find a get-away:
finally, we had to cut boughs and sticks, and bridge the place over
with them. Thus we eventually got the horses over one by one without
accident or loss. In four miles we touched on a bend of the river
again, but had no occasion to recross, as it was not in our road. This
day, having wasted so much time in the crossings, we travelled only
fifteen miles. The horizon from this camp was bounded from south-west,
and west, round by north, to north-west, by ranges; which I was not
sorry to perceive. Those to the west, and south-west, were the highest
and most pointed. It appears that the Finke must come under or through
some of those to the north-west. To-day I observed a most beautiful
pigeon, quite new to me; it was of a dark-brown colour, mottled under
the throat and on the breast; it had also a high top-knot. It is
considerably smaller than the Sturt pigeon of his Central Australian
expedition.

It was now the 28th of August, and the temperature of the atmosphere
was getting warmer. Journeying now again about north-west, we reached
a peculiar pointed hill with the Finke at its foot. We passed over the
usual red sandhill country covered with the porcupine grass,
characteristic of the Finke country, and saw a shallow sheet of yellow
rain water in a large clay pan, which is quite an unusual feature in
this part of the world, clay being so conspicuous by its absence. The
hill, when we reached it, assumed the appearance of a high pinnacle;
broken fragments of rock upon its sides and summit showed it too rough
and precipitous to climb with any degree of pleasure. I named it
Christopher's Pinnacle, after a namesake of mine. The range behind it
I named Chandler's Range. For some miles we had seen very little
porcupine grass, but here we came into it again, to the manifest
disgust of our horses. We had now a line of hills on our right, with
the river on our left hand, and in six or seven miles came to the west
end of Chandler's Range, and could see to the north and north-west
another, and much higher the line running parallel to Chandler's
Range, but extending to the west as far as I could see. The country
hereabouts has been nearly all burnt by the natives, and the horses
endeavour to pick roads where the dreaded triodia has been destroyed.

We passed a few clumps of casuarinas and a few stunted trees with
broad, poplar-like leaves. Travelling for twelve miles on this
bearing, we struck the Finke again, running nearly north and south.
Here the river had a stony bed with a fine reach of water in it; so
to-night at least our anxiety as regards the horses bogging is at an
end. The stream purling over its stony floor produces a most agreeable
sound, such as I have not heard for many a day. Here I might say,
"Brightly the brook through the green leaflets, giddy with joyousness,
dances along."

Soon after we had unpacked and let go our horses, we were accosted by
a native on the opposite side of the creek. Our little dog became
furious; then two natives appeared. We made an attempt at a long
conversation, but signally failed, for neither of us knew many of the
words the other was saying. The only bit of information I obtained
from them was their name for the river--as they kept continually
pointing to it and repeating the word Larapinta. This word, among the
Peake and Charlotte natives, means a snake, and from the continual
serpentine windings of this peculiar and only Central Australian
river, no doubt the name is derived. I shot a hawk for them, and they
departed. The weather to-day was fine, with agreeable cool breezes;
the sky has become rather overcast; the flies are very numerous and
troublesome; and it seems probable we may have a slight fall of rain
before long.

A few drops of rain fell during the night, which made me regret that I
had not our tarpaulins erected, though no more fell. In the morning
there was sultriness in the air though the sky was clear; the
thermometer stood at 52 degrees, and at sunrise a smoky haze pervaded
the whole sky. Whilst we were packing up the horses this morning, the
same two natives whom we saw last night, again made their appearance,
bringing with them a third, who was painted, feathered, greased, and
red-ochred, in, as they doubtless thought, the most alarming manner. I
had just mounted my horse, and rode towards them, thinking to get some
more information from the warrior as to the course of the creek, etc.,
but when they saw the horse approaching they scampered off, and the
bedizened warrior projected himself into the friendly branches of the
nearest tree with the most astonishing velocity. Perceiving that it
was useless to try to approach them, without actually running them to
earth, we left them; and crossing the river easily over its stony bed,
we continued north-west towards a mountain in the ranges that
traversed the horizon in that direction. The river appeared to come
from the same spot. A breeze from the north-west caused the dust
raised by the pack-horses, which we drove in a mob before us,
travelling upon the loose soil where the spinifex had all been lately
burnt, to blow directly in our faces. At five miles we struck on a
bend of a river, and we saw great volumes of smoke from burning grass
and triodia rising in all directions. The natives find it easier to
catch game when the ground is bare, or covered only with a short
vegetation, than when it is clothed with thick coarse grasses or
pungent shrubs. A tributary from the north, or east of north, joined
the Finke on this course, but it was destitute of water at the
junction. Soon now the river swept round to the westward, along the
foot of the hills we were approaching. Here a tributary from the west
joined, having a slender stream of water running along its bed. It was
exceedingly boggy, and we had to pass up along it for over two miles
before we could find a place to cross to enable us to reach the main
stream, now to the north of us. I called this McMinn's Creek.

On reaching the Finke we encamped. In the evening I ascended a
mountain to the north-westward of us. It was very rough, stony, and
precipitous, and composed of red sandstone; its summit was some 800
feet above our camp. It had little other vegetation upon it than huge
plots of triodia, of the most beautiful and vivid green, and set with
the most formidable spines. Whenever one moves, these spines enter the
clothes in all directions, making it quite a torture to walk about
among them. From here I could see that the Finke turned up towards
these hills through a glen, in a north-westerly direction. Other
mountains appeared to the north and north-west; indeed this seemed to
be a range of mountains of great length and breadth. To the eastwards
it may stretch to the telegraph line, and to the west as far as the
eye could see. The sun had gone down before I had finished taking
bearings. Our road to-morrow will be up through the glen from which
the river issues. All day a most objectionable hot wind has been
blowing, and clouds of smoke and ashes from the fires, and masses of
dust from the loose soil ploughed up by the horses in front of us, and
blowing in our faces, made it one of the most disagreeable days I ever
passed. At night, however, a contrast obtained--the wind dropped, and
a calm, clear, and beautiful night succeeded to the hot, smoky, and
dusty day. Vega alone gave me my latitude here, close to the mouth of
the glen, as 24 degrees 25' 12"; and, though the day had been so hot
and disagreeable, the night proved cold and chilly, the thermometer
falling to 24 degrees by daylight, but there was no frost, or even any
dew to freeze.


CHAPTER 1.2. FROM 30TH AUGUST TO 6TH SEPTEMBER, 1872.

(ILLUSTRATION: VIEW IN THE GLEN OF PALMS.)

Milk thistle.
In the glen.
A serpentine and rocky road.
Name a new creek.
Grotesque hills.
Caves and caverns.
Cypress pines.
More natives.
Astonish them.
Agreeable scenery.
Sentinel stars.
Pelicans.
Wild and picturesque scenery.
More natives.
Palm-trees.
A junction in the glen.
High ranges to the north.
Palms and flowers.
The Glen of Palms.
Slight rain.
Rain at night.
Plant various seeds.
End of the glen.
Its length.
Krichauff Range.
The northern range.
Level country between.
A gorge.
A flooded channel.
Cross a western tributary.
Wild ducks.
Ramble among the mountains.
Their altitude.
A splendid panorama.
Progress stopped by a torrent and impassable gorge.

Our start this morning was late, some of our horses having wandered in
the night, the feed at the camp not being very good; indeed the only
green herb met by us, for some considerable distance, has been the sow
or milk thistle (Sonchus oleraceus), which grows to a considerable
height. Of this the horses are extremely fond: it is also very
fattening. Entering the mouth of the glen, in two miles we found
ourselves fairly enclosed by the hills, which shut in the river on
both sides. We had to follow the windings of the serpentine channel;
the mountains occasionally forming steep precipices overhanging the
stream, first upon one side, then upon the other. We often had to lead
the horses separately over huge ledges of rock, and frequently had to
cut saplings and lever them out of the way, continually crossing and
recrossing the river. On camping in the glen we had only made good
eleven miles, though to accomplish this we had travelled more than
double the distance. At the camp a branch creek came out of the
mountains to the westwards, which I named Phillip's Creek. The whole
of this line of ranges is composed of red sandstone in large or small
fragments, piled up into the most grotesque shapes. Here and there
caves and caverns exist in the sides of the hills.

A few trees of the cypress pine (Callitris) were seen upon the summits
of the higher mounts. The hills and country generally seen in this
glen are more fertile than those outside, having real grass instead of
triodia upon their sides. I saw two or three natives just before
camping; they kept upon the opposite side of the water, according to a
slight weakness of theirs. Just at the time I saw them, I had my eye
on some ducks upon the water in the river bed, I therefore determined
to kill two birds with one stone; that is to say, to shoot the ducks
and astonish the natives at the same time. I got behind a tree, the
natives I could see were watching me most intently the while, and
fired. Two ducks only were shot, the remainder of the birds and the
natives, apparently, flying away together. Our travels to-day were
very agreeable; the day was fine, the breezes cool, and the scenery
continually changing, the river taking the most sinuous windings
imaginable; the bed of it, as might be expected in such a glen, is
rough and stony, and the old fear of the horses bogging has departed
from us. By bearings back upon hills at the mouth of the glen I found
our course was nearly north 23 degrees west. The night was clear and
cold; the stars, those sentinels of the sky, appeared intensely
bright. To the explorer they must ever be objects of admiration and
love, as to them he is indebted for his guidance through the untrodden
wilderness he is traversing. "And sweet it is to watch them in the
evening skies weeping dew from their gentle eyes." Several hundred
pelicans, those antediluvian birds, made their appearance upon the
water early this morning, but seeing us they flew away before a shot
could be fired. These birds came from the north-west; indeed, all the
aquatic birds that I have seen upon the wing, come and go in that
direction. I am in hopes of getting through this glen to-day, for
however wild and picturesque the scenery, it is very difficult and bad
travelling for the unshod horses; consequently it is difficult to get
them along. There was no other road to follow than the windings of the
river bed through this mountain-bound glen, in the same manner as
yesterday. Soon after starting, I observed several natives ahead of
us; immediately upon their discovering us they raised a great outcry,
which to our ears did not exactly resemble the agreeable vibration of
the melodious sound, it being quite the opposite. Then of course
signal fires were made which raised great volumes of smoke, the
natives thinking perhaps to intimidate and prevent us from farther
advance. Neither of these effects was produced, so their next idea was
to depart themselves, and they ran ahead of us up the glen. I also saw
another lot of some twenty or thirty scudding away over the rocks and
stony hills--these were probably the women and children. Passing their
last night's encampment, we saw that they had left all their valuables
behind them--these we left untouched. One old gentleman sought the
security of a shield of rock, where this villain upon earth and fiend
in upper air most vehemently apostrophised us, and probably ordered us
away out of his territory. To the command in itself we paid little
heed, but as it fell in with our own ideas, we endeavoured to carry it
out as fast as possible. This, I trust, was satisfactory, as I always
like to do what pleases others, especially when it coincides with my
own views.

   "It's a very fine thing, and delightful to see
    Inclination and duty both join and agree."

Some of the natives near him threatened us with their spears, and
waved knobbed sticks at us, but we departed without any harm being
done on either side.

(ILLUSTRATION: THE PALM-TREE FOUND IN THE GLEN OF PALMS.)

Soon after leaving the natives, we had the gratification of
discovering a magnificent specimen of the Fan palm, a species of
Livistona, allied to one in the south of Arnhem's Land, and now
distinguished as the Maria Palm (Baron von Mueller), growing in the
channel of the watercourse with flood drifts against its stem. Its
dark-hued, dome-shaped frondage contrasted strangely with the paler
green foliage of the eucalyptus trees that surrounded it. It was a
perfectly new botanical feature to me, nor did I expect to meet it in
this latitude. "But there's a wonderful power in latitude, it alters a
man's moral relations and attitude." I had noticed some strange
vegetation in the dry flood drifts lower down, and was on the qui vive
for something new, but I did not know that. This fine tree was sixty
feet long, or high, in the barrel. Passing the palms, we continued
amongst the defiles of this mountain glen, which appears to have no
termination, for no signs of a break or anything but a continuation of
the range could be observed from any of the hills I ascended.

It was late in the afternoon when we left the palm-groves, and though
we travelled over twenty miles in distance could only make twelve good
from last camp. Although this glen was rough and rocky, yet the
purling of the water over its stony bed was always a delightful sound
to me; and when the winds of evening fanned us to repose, it seemed as
though some kindly spirit whispered that it would guard us while we
slept and when the sun declined the swift stream echoed on.

The following day being Sunday, the 1st September, I made it a day of
rest, for the horses at least, whose feet were getting sore from
continued travel over rocks and boulders of stone. I made an excursion
into the hills, to endeavour to discover when and where this
apparently interminable glen ceased, for with all its grandeur,
picturesqueness, and variety, it was such a difficult road for the
horses, that I was getting heartily tired of it; besides this, I
feared this range might be its actual source, and that I should find
myself eventually blocked and stopped by impassable water-choked
gorges, and that I should finally have to retreat to where I first
entered it. I walked and climbed over several hills, cliffs, and
precipices, of red sandstone, to the west of the camp, and at length
reached the summit of a pine-clad mountain considerably higher than
any other near it. Its elevation was over 1000 feet above the level of
the surrounding country. From it I obtained a view to all points of
the compass except the west, and could descry mountains, from the
north-east round by north to the north-north west, at which point a
very high and pointed mount showed its top above the others in its
neighbourhood, over fifty miles away. To the north and east of north a
massive chain, with many dome-shaped summits, was visible. Below,
towards the camp, I could see the channel of the river where it forced
its way under the perpendicular sides of the hills, and at a spot not
far above the camp it seemed split in two, or rather was joined by
another watercourse from the northwards. From the junction the course
of the main stream was more directly from the west. Along the course
of the tributary at about ten miles I could see an apparently open
piece of country, and with the glasses there appeared a sheet of water
upon it. I was glad to find a break in the chain, though it was not on
the line I should travel. Returning to my companions, I imparted to
them the result of my observations.

On Monday, the 2nd, there was a heaviness in the atmosphere that felt
like approaching rain. The thermometer during the night had not fallen
below 60 degrees; over 4 degrees higher than at our first night's camp
from the pillar. To-day, again following the mazy windings of the
glen, we passed the northern tributary noticed yesterday, and
continued on over rocks, under precipices, crossing and re-crossing
the channel, and turning to all points of the compass, so that nearly
three miles had to be travelled to make good one. Clumps of the
beautiful palms were occasionally passed, growing mostly in the river
bed, and where they appear, they considerably enliven the scenery.
During my sojourn in this glen, and indeed from first starting, I
collected a great number of most beautiful flowers, which grow in
profusion in this otherwise desolate glen. I was literally surrounded
by fair flowers of every changing hue. Why Nature should scatter such
floral gems upon such a stony sterile region it is difficult to
understand, but such a variety of lovely flowers of every kind and
colour I had never met with previously. Nature at times, indeed,
delights in contrasts, for here exists a land "where bright flowers
are all scentless, and songless bright birds." The flowers alone would
have induced me to name this Glen Flora; but having found in it also
so many of the stately palm trees, I have called it the Glen of Palms.
Peculiar indeed, and romantic too, is this new-found watery glen,
enclosed by rocky walls, "Where dial-like, to portion time, the
palm-tree's shadow falls."

While we were travelling to-day, a few slight showers fell, giving us
warning in their way that heavier falls might come. We were most
anxious to reach the northern mouth of the glen if possible before
night, so heartily tired were we of so continuously serpentine a
track; we therefore kept pushing on. We saw several natives to-day,
but they invariably fled to the fastnesses of their mountain homes,
they raised great volumes of smoke, and their strident vociferations
caused a dull and buzzing sound even when out of ear-shot. The
pattering of the rain-drops became heavier, yet we kept on, hoping at
every turn to see an opening which would free us from our
prison-house; but night and heavier rain together came, and we were
compelled to remain another night in the palmy glen. I found a small
sloping, sandy, firm piece of ground, probably the only one in the
glen, a little off from the creek, having some blood-wood or red
gum-trees growing upon it, and above the reach of any flood-mark--for
it is necessary to be careful in selecting a site on a watercourse,
as, otherwise, in a single instant everything might be swept to
destruction. We were fortunate indeed to find such a refuge, as it was
large enough for the horses to graze on, and there was some good feed
upon it. By the time we had our tarpaulins fixed, and everything under
cover, the rain fell in earnest. The tributary passed this morning was
named Ellery's Creek. The actual distance we travelled to-day was
eighteen miles; to accomplish this we travelled from morn till night.
Although the rain continued at intervals all night, no great quantity
fell. In the morning the heavens were clear towards the south, but to
the north dense nimbus clouds covered the hills and darkened the sky.
Not removing the camp, I took another ramble into the hills to the
east of the camp, and from the first rise I saw what I was most
anxious to see, that is to say, the end, or rather the beginning of
the glen, which occurred at about two miles beyond our camp. Beyond
that the Finke came winding from the north-west, but clouds obscured a
distant view. It appeared that rain must still be falling north of us,
and we had to seek the shelter of our canvas home. At midday the whole
sky became overclouded, rain came slowly down, and when the night
again descended heavier still was then the fall. At an hour after
daylight on the morrow the greatest volume fell, and continued for
several hours. At midday it held up sufficiently to enable me to plant
some seeds of various trees, plants, vegetables, etc., given me
specially by Baron von Mueller. Among these were blue gum (tree),
cucumbers, melons, culinary vegetables, white maize, prairie grass,
sorghum, rye, and wattle-tree seeds, which I soaked before planting.
Although the rain lasted thirty-six hours in all, only about an inch
fell. It was with great pleasure that at last, on the 5th, we left the
glen behind us, and in a couple of miles debouched upon a plain, which
ran up to the foot of this line of ranges. The horses seemed to be
especially pleased to be on soft ground again. The length of this glen
is considerable, as it occupies 31 minutes of latitude. The main
bearing of it is nearly north 25 degrees west; it is the longest
feature of the kind I ever traversed, being over forty miles straight,
and over a hundred miles of actual travelling, and it appeared the
only pass through the range, which I named the Krichauff. To the north
a higher and more imposing chain existed, apparently about twenty
miles away. This northern chain must be the western portion of the
McDonnell Range. The river now is broader than in the glen; its bed,
however, is stony, and not boggy, the country level, sandy, and thinly
timbered, mostly all the vegetation being burnt by grass fires set
alight by the natives.

Travelling now upon the right bank of this stream, we cut off most of
the bends, which, however, were by no means so extensive or so
serpentine as in the glen or on the south side of it. Keeping near the
river bank, we met but little porcupine grass for the most part of the
day's stage, but there was abundance of it further off. The river took
us to the foot of the big mountains, and we camped about a mile below
a gorge through which it issues. As we neared the new hills, we became
aware that the late rains were raising the waters of the river. At six
miles before camping we crossed a tributary joining the Finke at right
angles from the west, where there are some ranges in that direction; a
slight stream was running down the bed. My next anxiety is to discover
where this river comes from, or whether its sources are to be found in
this chain. The day was delightfully fine and cool, the breezes seemed
to vibrate the echo of an air which Music, sleeping at her instrument,
had ceased to play. The ground is soft after the late rains. I said we
camped a mile below a gorge; at night I found my position to be in
latitude 23 degrees 40', and longitude 132 degrees 31', the variation
3 degrees east. We shot a few ducks, which were very fat and good.
This morning I took a walk into the hills to discover the best route
to take next. The high ranges north seem to be formed of three
separate lines, all running east and west; the most northerly being
the highest, rising over 2000 feet above the level of the surrounding
country, and, according to my barometrical and boiling-point
measurements, I found that at the Charlotte Waters I was 900 feet
above the sea. From that point up to the foot of these mountains the
country had steadily risen, as we traced the Finke, over 1000 feet, so
that the highest points of that range are over 4000 feet above sea
level; the most southerly of the three lines is composed of sandstone,
the middle and highest tiers I think change to granite. I climbed for
several hours over masses of hills, but always found one just a little
farther on to shut out the view. At length I reached the summit of a
high round mountain in the middle tier, and a most varied and splendid
panorama was spread before me, or I was spread before it.

To the north was the main chain, composed for the most part of
individual high mounts, there being a valley between them and the hill
I was on, and meandering along through this valley from the west I
could trace the course of the Finke by its timber for some miles. To
the east a mass of high and jumbled hills appeared, and one
bluff-faced mount was more conspicuous than the rest. Nearer to me,
and almost under my feet, was the gorge through which the river
passes, and it appears to be the only pass through this chain. I
approached the precipice overlooking the gorge, and found the channel
so flooded by the late rains, that it was impossible to get the horses
up through it. The hills which enclosed it were equally impracticable,
and it was utterly useless to try to get horses over them. The view to
the west was gratifying, for the ranges appeared to run on in
undiminished height in that direction, or a little north of it. From
the face of several of the hills climbed to-day, I saw streams of pure
water running, probably caused by the late rains. One hill I passed
over I found to be composed of puddingstone, that is to say, a
conglomeration of many kinds of stone mostly rounded and mixed up in a
mass, and formed by the smothered bubblings of some ancient and
ocean-quenched volcano. The surface of the place now more particularly
mentioned had been worn smooth by the action of the passage of water,
so that it presented the appearance of an enormous tessellated
pavement, before which the celebrated Roman one at Bognor, in Sussex,
which I remember, when I was a boy, on a visit to Goodwood, though
more artistically but not more fantastically arranged, would be
compelled to hide its diminished head. In the course of my rambles I
noticed a great quantity of beautiful flowers upon the hills, of
similar kinds to those collected in the Glen of Palms, and these
interested me so greatly, that the day passed before I was aware, and
I was made to remember the line, "How noiseless falls the foot of Time
that only treads on flowers." I saw two kangaroos and one rock
wallaby, but they were too wild to allow me to approach near enough to
get a shot at them. When I said I walked to-day, I really started on
an old favourite horse called Cocky, that had carried me for years,
and many a day have I had to thank him for getting me out of
difficulties through his splendid powers of endurance. I soon found
the hills too rough for a horse, so fixing up his bridle, I said, "Now
you stop there till I come back." I believe he knew everything I said,
for I used frequently to talk to him. When I came back at night, not
thinking he would stay, as the other horses were all feeding within
half a mile of him, there he was just as I had left him. I was quite
inclined to rest after my scrambles in the hills. During the night
nothing occurred to disturb our slumbers, which indeed were aided by
the sounds of the rippling stream, which sang to us a soothing song.


CHAPTER 1.3. FROM 6TH TO 17TH SEPTEMBER, 1872.

Progress stopped.
Fall back on a tributary.
River flooded.
A new range.
Rudall's Creek.
Reach the range.
Grass-trees.
Wild beauty of scene.
Scarcity of water.
A pea-like vetch.
Name the range.
A barren spot.
Water seen from it.
Follow a creek channel.
Other creeks join it.
A confined glen.
Scrubby and stony hills.
Strike a gum creek.
Slimy water.
A pretty tree.
Flies troublesome.
Emus.
An orange tree.
Tropic of Capricorn.
Melodious sounds.
Carmichael's Creek.
Mountains to the north.
Ponds of water.
A green plain.
Clay-pan water.
Fine herbage.
Kangaroos and emus numerous.
A new tree.
Agreeable encampment.
Peculiar mountains.
High peak.
Start to ascend it.
Game plentiful.
Racecourse plain.
Surrounded by scrubs.
A bare slope.
A yawning chasm.
Appearance of the peak.
Gleaming pools.
Cypress pines.
The tropic clime of youth.
Proceed westwards.
Thick scrubs.
Native method of procuring water.
A pine-clad hill.
A watercourse to the south.
A poor supply of water.
Skywards the only view.
Horses all gone.
Increasing temperature.
Attempt ascending high bluff.
Timberless mountains.
Beautiful flowers.
Sultry night.
Wretched encampment.
Depart from it.

I had come to the decision, as it was impossible to follow the Finke
through the gorge in consequence of the flood, and as the hills were
equally impracticable, to fall back upon the tributary I had noticed
the day before yesterday as joining the river from the west, thinking
I might in twenty or thirty miles find a gap in the northern range
that would enable me to reach the Finke again. The night was very
cold, the thermometer at daylight stood at 28 degrees. The river had
risen still higher in the night, and it was impossible to pass through
the gorge. We now turned west-south-west, in order to strike the
tributary. Passing first over rough stony ridges, covered with
porcupine grass, we entered a sandy, thickly-bushed country, and
struck the creek in ten miles. A new range lying west I expected to be
the source of it, but it now seemed to turn too much to the south.
There was very poor grass, it being old and dry, but as the new range
to the west was too distant, we encamped, as there was water. This
watercourse was called Rudall's Creek. A cold and very dewy night made
all our packs, blankets, etc., wet and clammy; the mercury fell below
freezing point, but instantly upon the sun's appearance it went up
enormously. The horses rambled, and it was late when we reached the
western range, as our road was beset by some miles of dense scrubs.
The range was isolated, and of some elevation. As we passed along the
creek, the slight flood became slighter still; it had now nearly
ceased running. The day was one of the warmest we had yet experienced.
The creek now seemed not to come from the range, but, thinking water
might be got there so soon after rains, we travelled up to its foot.
The country was sandy, and bedecked with triodia, but near the range I
saw for the first time on this expedition a quantity of the Australian
grass-tree (Xanthorrhoea) dotting the landscape. They were of all
heights, from two to twenty feet. The country round the base of this
range is not devoid of a certain kind of wild beauty. A few blood-wood
or red gum-trees, with their brilliant green foliage, enlivened the
scene.

A small creek, lined with gum-trees, issued from an opening or glen,
up which I rode in search of water, but was perfectly unsuccessful, as
not a drop of the life-sustaining fluid was to be found. Upon
returning to impart this discouraging intelligence to my companions, I
stumbled upon a small quantity in a depression, on a broad, almost
square boulder of rock that lay in the bed of the creek. There was not
more than two quarts. As the horses had watered in the afternoon, and
as there was a quantity of a herb, much like a green vetch or small
pea, we encamped. I ascended a small eminence to the north, and with
the glasses could distinguish the creek last left, now running east
and west. I saw water gleaming in its channel, and at the junction of
the little creek we were now on; there was also water nearly east. As
the horses were feeding down the creek that way, I felt sure they
would go there and drink in the night. It is, however, very strange
whenever one wants horses to do a certain thing or feed a certain way,
they are almost sure to do just the opposite, and so it was in the
present case. On returning to camp by a circuitous route, I found in a
small rocky crevice an additional supply of water, sufficient for our
own requirements--there was nearly a bucketful--and felicity reigned
in the camp. A few cypress pines are rooted in the rocky shelving
sides of the range, which is not of such elevation as it appeared from
a distance. The highest points are not more than from 700 to 800 feet.
I collected some specimens of plants, which, however, are not peculiar
to this range. I named it Gosse's range, after Mr. Harry Gosse. The
late rains had not visited this isolated mass. It is barren and
covered with spinifex from turret to basement, wherever sufficient
soil can be found among the stones to admit of its growth.

The night of the 9th of September, like the preceding, was cold and
dewy. The horses wandered quite in the wrong direction, and it was
eleven o'clock before we got away from the camp and went north to the
sheet of water seen yesterday, where we watered the horses and
followed up the creek, as its course here appeared to be from the
west. The country was level, open, and sandy, but covered with the
widely pervading triodia (irritans). Some more Xanthorrhoea were seen,
and several small creeks joined this from the ranges to the north.
Small sheets of water were seen in the creek as we passed along, but
whether they existed before the late rains is very problematical. The
weather is evidently getting warmer. We had been following this creek
for two days; it now turned up into a confined glen in a more
northerly direction. At last its northern course was so pronounced we
had to leave it, as it evidently took its rise amongst the low hills
in that direction, which shut out any view of the higher ranges behind
them. Our road was now about west-north-west, over wretched, stony,
barren, mallee (Eucalyptus) covered low hills or stony rises; the
mallee scrub being so thick, it was difficult to drive the horses
through it. Farther on we crested the highest ground the horses had
yet passed over. From here with the glasses I fancied I saw the timber
of a creek in a valley to the north-west, in which direction we now
went, and struck the channel of a small dry watercourse, whose banks
were lined with gum-trees. When there is any water in its channel, its
flow is to the west. The creek joined another, in which, after
following it for a mile or two, I found a small pool of water, which
had evidently lain there for many months, as it was half slime, and
drying up fast. It was evident the late rains had not fallen here.

In consequence of the windings of the creeks, we travelled upon all
points of the compass, but our main course was a little west of
north-west. The day was warm enough, and when we camped we felt the
benefit of what shade the creek timber could afford. Some of the small
vetch, or pea-like plant, of which the horses are so fond, existed
here. To-day we saw a single quandong tree (Fusanus; one of the sandal
woods, but not of commerce) in full bearing, but the fruit not yet
ripe. I also saw a pretty drooping acacia, whose leaves hung in small
bunches together, giving it an elegant and pendulous appearance. This
tree grows to a height of fifty feet; and some were over a foot
through in the barrel.

The flies to-day were exceedingly troublesome: a sure sign of
increasing temperature. We saw some emus, but being continually hunted
by the natives, they were too shy to allow us to get within shot of
them. Some emu steaks would come in very handy now. Near our pool of
slime a so-called native orange tree (Capparis), of a very poor and
stunted habit, grew; and we allowed it to keep on growing.

The stars informed me, in the night, that I was almost under the
tropic line, my latitude being 23 degrees 29'. The horses fed well on
the purple vetch, their bells melodiously tinkling in the air the
whole night long. The sound of the animals' bells, in the night, is
really musical to the explorer's ear. I called the creek after Mr.
Carmichael; and hoping it would contain good water lower down, decided
to follow it, as it trended to the west. We found, however, in a few
miles, it went considerably to the south of west, when it eventually
turned up again to the north-west.

We still had the main line of mountains on our right, or north of us:
and now, to the south, another line of low hills trended up towards
them; and there is evidently a kind of gap between the two lines of
ranges, about twenty-five miles off. The country along the banks of
Carmichael's Creek was open and sandy, with plenty of old dry grass,
and not much triodia; but to the south, the latter and mallee scrub
approached somewhat near. We saw several small ponds of water as we
passed along, but none of any size. In seven or eight miles it split
into several channels, and eventually exhausted itself upon an open
grassy swamp or plain. The little plain looked bright and green. I
found some rain water, in clay pans, upon it. A clay pan is a small
area of ground, whose top soil has been washed or blown away, leaving
the hard clay exposed; and upon this surface, one, two, three, or
(scarcely) more inches of rain water may remain for some days after
rain: the longer it remains the thicker it gets, until at last it
dries in cakes which shine like tiles; these at length crumble away,
and the clay pan is swept by winds clean and ready for the next
shower. In the course of time it becomes enlarged and deepened. They
are very seldom deep enough for ducks.

The grass and herbage here were excellent. There were numerous
kangaroos and emus on the plain, but they preferred to leave us in
undisturbed possession of it. There were many evidences of native
camping places about here; and no doubt the natives look upon this
little circle as one of their happy hunting grounds. To-day I noticed
a tree in the mallee very like a Currajong tree. This being the most
agreeable and fertile little spot I had seen, we did not shift the
camp, as the horses were in clover. Our little plain is bounded on the
north by peculiar mountains; it is also fringed with scrub nearly all
round. The appearance of the northern mountains is singular,
grotesque, and very difficult to describe. There appear to be still
three distinct lines. One ends in a bluff, to the east-north-east of
the camp; another line ends in a bluff to the north-north-east; while
the third continues along the northern horizon. One point, higher than
the rest in that line, bears north 26 degrees west from camp. The
middle tier of hills is the most strange-looking; it recedes in the
distance eastwards, in almost regular steps or notches, each of them
being itself a bluff, and all overlooking a valley. The bluffs have a
circular curve, are of a red colour, and in perspective appear like a
gigantic flat stairway, only that they have an oblique tendency to the
southward, caused, I presume, by the wash of ocean currents that, at
perhaps no greatly distant geological period, must have swept over
them from the north. My eyes, however, were mostly bent upon the high
peak in the northern line; and Mr. Carmichael and I decided to walk
over to, and ascend it. It was apparently no more than seven or eight
miles away.

As my reader is aware, I left the Finke issuing through an
impracticable gorge in these same ranges, now some seventy-five miles
behind us, and in that distance not a break had occurred in the line
whereby I could either get over or through it, to meet the Finke
again; indeed, at this distance it was doubtful whether it were worth
while to endeavour to do so, as one can never tell what change may
take place, in even the largest of Australian streams, in such a
distance. When last seen, it was trending along a valley under the
foot of the highest of three tiers of hills, and coming from the west;
but whether its sources are in those hills, or that it still runs on
somewhere to the north of us, is the question which I now hope to
solve. I am the more anxious to rediscover the Finke, if it still
exists, because water has been by no means plentiful on the route
along which I have lately been travelling; and I believe a better
country exists upon the other side of the mountains.

At starting, Carmichael and I at first walked across the plain, we
being encamped upon its southern end. It was beautifully grassed, and
had good soil, and it would make an excellent racecourse, or ground
for a kangaroo hunt. We saw numbers of kangaroos, and emus too, but
could get no shots at them. In three miles the plain ended in thick,
indeed very dense, scrub, which continued to the foot of the hills; in
it the grass was long, dry, and tangled with dead and dry burnt sticks
and timber, making it exceedingly difficult to walk through. Reaching
the foot of the hills, I found the natives had recently burnt all the
vegetation from their sides, leaving the stones, of which it was
composed, perfectly bare. It was a long distance to the top of the
first ridge, but the incline was easy, and I was in great hopes, if it
continued so, to be able to get the horses over the mountains at this
spot. Upon arriving at the top of the slope, I was, however,
undeceived upon that score, for we found the high mount, for which we
were steering, completely separated from us by a yawning chasm, which
lay, under an almost sheer precipice, at our feet. The high mountain
beyond, near the crown, was girt around by a solid wall of rock, fifty
or sixty feet in height, from the edge of which the summit rose. It
was quite unapproachable, except, perhaps, in one place, round to the
northward.

The solid rock of which it had formerly been composed had, by some
mighty force of nature, been split into innumerable fissures and
fragments, both perpendicularly and horizontally, and was almost
mathematically divided into pieces or squares, or unequal cubes,
simply placed upon one another, like masons' work without mortar. The
lower strata of these divisions were large, the upper tapered to
pieces not much larger than a brick, at least they seemed so from a
distance. The whole appearance of this singular mount was grand and
awful, and I could not but reflect upon the time when these colossal
ridges were all at once rocking in the convulsive tremblings of some
mighty volcanic shock, which shivered them into the fragments I then
beheld. I said the hill we had ascended ended abruptly in a precipice;
by going farther round we found a spot, which, though practicable, was
difficult enough to descend. At the bottom of some of the ravines
below I could see several small pools of water gleaming in little
stony gullies.

The afternoon had been warm, if not actually hot, and our walking and
climbing had made us thirsty; the sight of water made us all the more
so. It was now nearly sundown, and it would be useless to attempt the
ascent of the mountain, as by the time we could reach its summit, the
sun would be far below the horizon, and we should obtain no view at
all.

It was, however, evident that no gap or pass existed by which I could
get my horses up, even if the country beyond were ever so promising. A
few of the cypress or Australian pines (Callitris) dotted the summits
of the hills, they also grew on the sides of some of the ravines below
us. We had, at least I had, considerable difficulty in descending the
almost perpendicular face to the water below. Carmichael got there
before I did, and had time to sit, laving his feet and legs in a fine
little rock hole full of pure water, filled, I suppose, by the late
rains. The water, indeed, had not yet ceased to run, for it was
trickling from hole to hole. Upon Mr. Carmichael inquiring what
delayed me so long, I replied: "Ah, it is all very easy for you; you
have two circumstances in your favour. You are young, and therefore
able to climb, and besides, you are in the tropic." To which he very
naturally replies, "If I am in the tropic you must be also." I
benignly answer, "No, you are in the tropic clime of youth." While on
the high ground no view of any kind, except along the mountains for a
mile or two east and west, could be obtained. I was greatly
disappointed at having such a toilsome walk for so little purpose. We
returned by a more circuitous route, eventually reaching the camp very
late at night, thoroughly tired out with our walk. I named this
mountain Mount Musgrave. It is nearly 1700 feet above the level of the
surrounding country, and over 3000 feet above the sea. The next day
Mr. Carmichael went out to shoot game; there were kangaroos, and in
the way of birds there were emus, crows, hawks, quail, and
bronze-winged pigeons; but all we got from his expedition was nil. The
horses now being somewhat refreshed by our stay here, we proceeded
across the little plain towards another high bluff hill, which loomed
over the surrounding country to the west-north-west. Flies were
troublesome, and very busy at our eyes; soon after daylight, and
immediately after sunrise, it became quite hot.

Traversing first the racecourse plain, we then entered some mulga
scrub; the mulga is an acacia, the wood extremely hard. It grows to a
height of twenty to thirty feet, but is by no means a shady or even a
pretty tree; it ranges over an enormous extent of Australia. The scrub
we now entered had been recently burnt near the edge of the plain; but
the further we got into it, the worse it became. At seven miles we
came to stones, triodia, and mallee, a low eucalyptus of the gumtree
family, growing generally in thick clumps from one root: its being
rooted close together makes it difficult travelling to force one's way
through. It grows about twenty feet high. The higher grade of
eucalypts or gum-trees delight in water and a good soil, and nearly
always line the banks of watercourses. The eucalypts of the mallee
species thrive in deserts and droughts, but contain water in their
roots which only the native inhabitants of the country can discover. A
white man would die of thirst while digging and fooling around trying
to get the water he might know was preserved by the tree, but not for
him; while an aboriginal, upon the other hand, coming to a
mallee-tree, after perhaps travelling miles through them without
noticing one, will suddenly make an exclamation, look at a tree, go
perhaps ten or twelve feet away, and begin to dig. In a foot or so he
comes upon a root, which he shakes upwards, gradually getting more and
more of it out of the ground, till he comes to the foot of the tree;
he then breaks it off, and has a root perhaps fifteen feet long--this,
by the way, is an extreme length. He breaks the root into sections
about a foot long, ties them into bundles, and stands them up on end
in a receptacle, when they drain out a quantity of beautifully sweet,
pure water. A very long root such as I have mentioned might give
nearly a bucketful of water; but woe to the white man who fancies he
can get water out of mallee. There are a few other trees of different
kinds that water is also got from, as I have known it obtained from
the mulga, acacia trees, and from some casuarina trees; it depends
upon the region they are in, as to what trees give the most if any
water, but it is an aboriginal art at any time or place to find it.

The mallee we found so dense that not a third of the horses could be
seen together, and with great difficulty we managed to reach the foot
of a small pine-clad hill lying under the foot of the high bluff
before mentioned--there a small creek lined with eucalypts ran under
its foot. Though our journey to-day was only twelve miles, that
distance through such horrible scrubs took us many hours. From the top
of the piny hill I could see a watercourse to the south two or three
miles away; it is probably Carmichael's Creek, reformed, after
splitting on the plain behind; Carmichael found a little water-hole up
this channel, with barely sufficient water for our use. The day had
been disagreeably warm. I rode over to the creek to the south, and
found two small puddles in its bed; but there was evidently plenty of
water to be got by digging, as by scratching with my hands I soon
obtained some. The camp which Carmichael and Robinson had selected,
while I rode over to the other creek, was a most wretched place, in
the midst of dense mallee and amidst thick plots of triodia, which we
had to cut away before we could sit down.

The only direction in which we could see a yard ahead of us was up
towards the sky; and as we were not going that way, it gave us no idea
of our next line of route. The big bluff we had been steering for all
day was, I may say, included in our skyward view, for it towered above
us almost overhead. Being away when the camp was selected, I was sorry
to hear that the horses had all been let go without hobbles; as they
had been in such fine quarters for three nights at the last camp on
the plain, it was more than probable they would work back through the
scrub to it in the night. The following morning not a horse was to be
found! Robinson and I went in search of them, and found they had split
into several mobs. I only got three, and at night Robinson returned
with only six, the remainder had been missed in the dense scrubs. The
thermometer stood at 95 degrees in the shade, and there was a warm
wind blowing. Robinson had a fine day's work, as he had to walk back
to the camp on the plain for the horses he got. In the afternoon I
attempted the high bluff immediately overlooking the camp. I had a bit
of cliff-climbing, and reached the summit of one hill of some
elevation, 1300 feet, and then found that a vast chasm, or ravine,
separated me from the main mountain chain. It would be dark before I
could--if I could--reach the summit, and then I should get no view, so
I returned to the camp. The height was considerable, as mountains in
this part of the world go, as it towered above the hill I was upon,
and was 500 or 600 feet higher. These mountains appear to be composed
of a kind of conglomerate granite; very little timber existed upon
them, but they were splendidly supplied with high, strong, coarse
spinifex. I slipped down a gully, fell into a hideous bunch of this
horrid stuff, and got pricked from head to foot; the spiny points
breaking off in my clothes and flesh caused me great annoyance and
pain for many days after. Many beautiful flowers grew on the
hillsides, in gullies and ravines; of these I collected several. We
secured what horses we had, for the night, which was warm and sultry.
In the morning Robinson and I rode after the still missing ones; at
the plain camp we found all except one, and by the time we returned it
was night.

Not hobbling the horses in general, we had some difficulty in finding
a pair of hobbles for each, and not being able to do so, I left one in
the mob without. This base reptile surreptitiously crawled away in the
night by himself. As our camp was the most wretched dog-hole it was
possible for a man to get into, in the midst of dense mallee, triodia,
and large stones, I determined to escape from it, before looking for
the now two missing animals. The water was completely exhausted. We
moved away south-westerly for about three miles, to the creek I had
scratched in some days ago; now we had to dig a big hole with a
shovel, and with a good deal of labour we obtained a sufficient supply
for a few days.


CHAPTER 1.4. FROM 17TH SEPTEMBER TO 1ST OCTOBER, 1872.

Search for the missing horses.
Find one.
Hot wind and flying sand.
Last horse recovered.
Annoyed by flies.
Mountains to the west.
Fine timber.
Gardiner's Range.
Mount Solitary.
Follow the creek.
Dig a tank.
Character of the country.
Thunderstorms.
Mount Peculiar.
A desolate region.
Sandhills.
Useless rain.
A bare granite hill.
No water.
Equinoctial gales.
Search for water.
Find a rock reservoir.
Native fig-trees.
Gloomy and desolate view.
The old chain.
Hills surrounded by scrubs.
More hills to the west.
Difficult watering-place.
Immortelles.
Cold weather.
View from a hill.
Renewed search for water.
Find a small supply.
Almost unapproachable.
Effects of the spinifex on the horses.
Pack-horses in scrubs.
The Mus conditor.
Glistening micaceous hills.
Unsuccessful search.
Waterless hill nine hundred feet high.
Oceans of scrub.
Retreat to last reservoir.
Natives' smokes.
Night without water.
Unlucky day.
Two horses lost.
Recover them.
Take a wrong turn.
Difficulty in watering the horses.
An uncomfortable camp.
Unsuccessful searches.
Mount Udor.
Mark a tree.
Tender-footed horses.
Poor feed.
Sprinkling rain.
Flies again troublesome.
Start for the western ranges.
No water.
Difficult scrubs.
Lonely camp.
Horses away.
Reach the range.
No water.
Retreat to Mount Udor.
Slight rain.
Determine to abandon this region.
Corkwood trees.
Ants' nests.
Glow-worms.
Native poplar trees.
Peculiar climate.
Red gum-trees.
A mare foals.
Depart for the south.
Remarks on the country.

Having fixed our camp at a new place, in the afternoon of the 17th
September, Robinson and I again went to look after the horses. At
three miles above the camp we found some water; soon after we got the
tracks of one horse and saw that he had been about there for a day or
two, as the tracks were that age. We made a sweep out round some
hills, found the tracks again, much fresher, and came upon the horse
about seven miles from the camp. The other horse was left for
to-morrow. Thermometer 96 degrees, sky overcast, rain imminent.

During the night of the 18th of September a few heat-drops of rain
fell. I sent Robinson away to the plain camp, feeling sure he would
find the rover there. A hot wind blew all day, the sand was flying
about in all directions. Robinson got the horse at last at the plain,
and I took special care to find a pair of hobbles for him for this
night at all events. The flies were an intolerable nuisance, not that
they were extraordinarily numerous, but so insufferably pertinacious.
I think the tropic fly of Australia the most abominable insect of its
kind. From the summit of the hill I ascended on Sunday, I found the
line of mountains still ran on to the west, the furthest hills
appeared fifty miles away. As they extend so far, and are the
principal features in sight, I shall follow them, in hopes of meeting
some creek, or river, that may carry me on to the west. It is a
remarkable fact that such high hills as I have been following should
send out no creek whose course extends farther than ten or twelve
miles. I could trace the creek I am now on by its timber for only a
few miles, its course appearing south of west. The country in its
immediate neighbourhood is open, and timbered with fine casuarina
trees; the grass is dry and long, and the triodia approaches to within
a quarter of a mile of it. The line of hills I previously mentioned as
running along to the south of us, we had now run out. I named them
Gardiner's Range, after a friend of Mr. Carmichael's. There is,
however, one small isolated hill, the furthest outpost of that line,
some three miles away to the south-west; the creek may probably take a
bend down towards it. I called it Mount Solitary. This creek is rather
well timbered, the gum-trees look fresh and young, and there is some
green herbage in places, though the surface water has all disappeared.

There was so little water at the camp tank, we had to send the horses
up the creek three miles to water, and on their return I was not sorry
to be moving again, for our stay at these two last camps had been
compulsory, and the anxiety, trouble, and annoyance we had, left no
very agreeable reminiscences of the locality in our minds.

We travelled along the creek all day, cutting off the bends, but
without seeing any signs of water: towards evening we set to work to
try if we could get any by digging. In about four feet, water began to
drain in, but, the sand being so loose, we had to remove an enormous
quantity to enable a horse to drink. Some of the horses would not go
into it, and had to be watered with a canvas bucket. The supply seemed
good, but it only drained in from the sides. Every time a horse drank
we had to clear out the sand for the next; it therefore took until
late before all were satisfied. The country was still open, and
timbered with fine black oak, or what is so called in Australia. It is
a species of casuarina, of the same family but distinct from the
beautiful desert oak. Triodia reigned supreme within half a mile. At
this camp the old grass had been burnt, and fresh young green shoots
appeared in its place; this was very good for the horses. A few drops
of rain fell; distant rumblings of thunder and flashes of lightning
now cooled the air. While we were at breakfast the next morning, a
thunderstorm came up to us from the west, then suddenly turned away,
only just sprinkling us, though we could see the rain falling heavily
a few yards to the south. We packed up and went off, hoping to find a
better watered region at the hills westwards. There was an
extraordinary mount a little to the west of north from us; it looked
something like a church; it was over twenty miles away: I called it
Mount Peculiar. Leaving the creek on our left, to run itself out into
some lonely flat or dismal swamp, known only to the wretched
inhabitants of this desolate region--over which there seems to brood
an unutterable stillness and a dread repose--we struck into sandhill
country, rather open, covered with the triodia or spinifex, and
timbered with the casuarina or black oak trees. We had scarcely gone
two miles when our old thunderstorm came upon us--it had evidently
missed us at first, and had now come to look for us--and it rained
heavily. The country was so sandy and porous that no water remained on
the surface. We travelled on and the storm travelled with us--the
ground sucking up every drop that fell. Continuing our course, which
was north 67 degrees west, we travelled twenty-five miles. At this
distance we came in sight of the mountains I was steering for, but
they were too distant to reach before night, so, turning a little
northward to the foot of a low, bare, white granite hill, I hoped to
find a creek, or at least some ledges in the rocks, where we might get
some water. Not a drop was to be found. Though we had been travelling
in the rain all day and accomplished thirty miles, we were obliged to
camp without water at last. There was good feed for the horses, and,
as it was still raining, they could not be very greatly in want of
water. We fixed up our tent and retired for the night, the wind
blowing furiously, as might reasonably be expected, for it was the eve
of the vernal equinox, and this I supposed was our share of the
equinoctial gales. We were compelled in the morning to remove the
camp, as we had not a drop of water, and unless it descended in sheets
the country could not hold it, being all pure red sand. The hill near
us had no rocky ledges to catch water, so we made off for the higher
mountains for which we were steering yesterday. Their nearest or most
eastern point was not more than four miles away, and we went first to
it. I walked on ahead of the horses with the shovel, to a small gully
I saw with the glasses, having some few eucalypts growing in it. I
walked up it, to and over rocky ledges, down which at times, no doubt,
small leaping torrents roar. Very little of yesterday's rain had
fallen here; but most fortunately I found one small rock reservoir,
with just sufficient water for all the horses. There was none either
above or below in any other basin, and there were many better-looking
places, but all were dry. The water in this one must have stood for
some time, yesterday's rain not having affected it in the least. The
place at which I found the water was the most difficult for horses to
reach; it was almost impracticable. After finding this opportune
though awkwardly situated supply, I climbed to the summit of the
mount. On the top was a native fig-tree in full bearing; the fruit was
ripe and delicious. It is the size of an ordinary marble, yellow when
unripe, and gradually becoming red, then black: it is full of small
seeds. I was disturbed from my repast by seeing the horses, several
hundred feet below me, going away in the wrong direction. And I had to
descend before I had time to look around; but the casual glance I
obtained gave me the most gloomy and desolate view imaginable; one,
almost enough to daunt the explorer from penetrating any farther into
such a dreadful region. To the eastward, I found I had now long outrun
the old main chain of mountains, which had turned up to the north, or
rather north-north-westward; between me and it a mass of jumbled and
broken mounts appeared; each separate one, however, was almost
surrounded by scrubs, which ran up to the foot of the hill I was upon.
Northward the view was similar. To the west the picture was the same,
except that a more defined range loomed above the intervening
scrubs--the hills furthest away in that direction being probably fifty
miles distant. The whole horizon looked dark and gloomy--I could see
no creeks of any kind, the most extensive water channels were mere
gullies, and not existing at all at a mile from the hills they issued
from.

Watering our horses proved a difficult and tedious task; as many of
them would not approach the rocky basin, the water had to be carried
up to them in canvas buckets. By the time they were all watered, and
we had descended from the rocky gully, the day had passed with most
miraculous celerity. The horses did not finish the water, there being
nearly sufficient to give them another drink. The grass was good here,
as a little flat, on which grew some yellow immortelles, had recently
been burnt. I allowed the horses to remain and drink up the balance of
the water, while I went away to inspect some other gorges or gullies
in the hills to the west of us, and see whether any more water could
be found. The day was cool and fine.

I climbed to the summit of a hill about 800 feet from its base. The
view was similar to yesterday's, except that I could now see these
hills ran on west for twelve or fifteen miles, where the country was
entirely covered with scrubs. Little gullies, with an odd, and
stunted, gum-tree here and there, were seen. Few of these gullies were
more than six feet wide, and the trumpery little streams that descend,
in even their most flooded state, would be of but little service to
anybody. I had wandered up and down hills, in and out of gullies, all
the morning, but had met no single drop of water, and was returning
disappointed to the camp when, on trying one more small scrubby,
dreadfully-rocky little gully which I had missed, or rather passed by,
in going out, I was fortunate enough to discover a few small rocky
holes full of the purest fluid. This treasure was small indeed, but my
gratitude was great; for what pleased me most was the rather strange
fact that the water was trickling from one basin to another, but with
the weakest possible flow. Above and below where I found this water
the gully and the rocks were as dry as the desert around. Had the
supply not been kept up by the trickling, half my horses would have
emptied all the holes at a draught.

The approach to this water was worse, rougher, rockier, and more
impracticable than at the camp; I was, however, most delighted to have
found it, otherwise I should have had to retreat to the last creek. I
determined, however, not to touch it now, but to keep it as a reserve
fund, should I be unable to find more out west. Returning to camp, we
gave the horses all the water remaining, and left the spot perfectly
dry.

We now had the line of hills on our right, and travelled nearly
west-north-west. Close to the foot of the hills the country is open,
but covered with large stones, between the interstices of which grow
huge bunches of the hideous spinifex, which both we and the horses
dread like a pestilence. We have encountered this scourge for over 200
miles. All around the coronets of most of the horses, in consequence
of their being so continually punctured with the spines of this
terrible grass, it has caused a swelling, or tough enlargement of the
flesh and skin, giving them the appearance of having ring-bones. Many
of them have the flesh quite raw and bleeding; they are also very
tender-footed from traversing so much stony ground, as we have lately
had to pass over. Bordering upon the open stony triodia ground
above-mentioned is a bed of scrubs, composed chiefly of mulga, though
there are various other trees, shrubs, and plants amongst it. It is so
dense and thick that in it we cannot see a third of the horses at
once; they, of course, continually endeavour to make into it to avoid
the stones and triodia; for, generally speaking, the pungent triodia
and the mulga acacia appear to be antagonistic members of the
vegetable kingdom. The ground in the scrubs is generally soft, and on
that account also the horses seek it. Out of kindness, I have
occasionally allowed them to travel in the scrubs, when our direct
course should have been on the open, until some dire mishap forces us
out again; for, the scrubs being so dense, the horses are compelled to
crash through them, tearing the coverings of their loads, and
frequently forcing sticks in between their backs or sides and their
saddles, sometimes staking themselves severely. Then we hear a frantic
crashing through the scrubs, and the sounds of the pounding of
horse-hoofs are the first notice we receive that some calamity has
occurred. So soon as we ourselves can force our way through, and
collect the horses the best way we can, yelling and howling to one
another to say how many each may have got, we discover one or two
missing. Then they have to be tracked; portions of loads are picked up
here and there, and, in the course of an hour or more, the horse or
horses are found, repacked, and on we push again, mostly for the open,
though rough and stony spinifex ground, where at least we can see what
is going on. These scrubs are really dreadful, and one's skin and
clothes get torn and ripped in all directions. One of these mishaps
occurred to-day.

In these scrubs are met nests of the building rat (Mus conditor). They
form their nests with twigs and sticks to the height of four feet, the
circumference being fifteen to twenty. The sticks are all lengths up
to three feet, and up to an inch in diameter. Inside are chambers and
galleries, while in the ground underneath are tunnels, which are
carried to some distance from their citadel. They occur in many parts
of Australia, and are occasionally met with on plains where few trees
can be found. As a general rule, they frequent the country inhabited
by the black oak (casuarina). They can live without water, but, at
times, build so near a watercourse as to have their structures swept
away by floods. Their flesh is very good eating.

In ten miles we had passed several little gullies, and reached the
foot of other hills, where a few Australian pines were scattered here
and there. These hills have a glistening, sheening, laminated
appearance, caused by the vast quantities of mica which abounds in
them. Their sides are furrowed and corrugated, and their upper
portions almost bare rock. Time was lost here in unsuccessful searches
for water, and we departed to another range, four or five miles
farther on, and apparently higher; therefore perhaps more likely to
supply us with water. Mr. Carmichael and I ascended the range, and
found it to be 900 feet from its base; but in all its gullies water
there was none. The view from the summit was just such as I have
described before--an ocean of scrubs, with isolated hills or ranges
appearing like islands in most directions. Our horses had been already
twenty-four hours without water. I wanted to reach the far range to
the west, but it was useless to push all the pack-horses farther into
such an ocean of scrubs, as our rate of progress in them was so
terribly slow. I decided to return to the small supply I had left as a
reserve, and go myself to the far range, which was yet some thirty
miles away. The country southward seemed to have been more recently
visited by the natives than upon our line of march, which perhaps was
not to be wondered at, as what could they get to live on out of such a
region as we had got into? Probably forty or fifty miles to the south,
over the tops of some low ridges, we saw the ascending smoke of
spinifex fires, still attended to by the natives; and in the
neighbourhood, no doubt, they had some watering places. On our retreat
we travelled round the northern face of the hills, upon whose south
side we had arrived, in hopes of finding some place having water,
where I might form a depot for a few days. By night we could find
none, and had to encamp without, either for ourselves or our horses.

The following day seemed foredoomed to be unlucky; it really appeared
as though everything must go wrong by a natural law. In the first
place, while making a hobble peg, while Carmichael and Robinson were
away after the horses, the little piece of wood slipped out of my
hand, and the sharp blade of the knife went through the top and nail
of my third finger and stuck in the end of my thumb. The cut bled
profusely, and it took me till the horses came to sew my mutilated
digits up. It was late when we left this waterless spot. As there was
a hill with a prepossessing gorge, I left Carmichael and Robinson to
bring the horses on, and rode off to see if I could find water there.
Though I rode and walked in gullies and gorges, no water was to be
found. I then made down to where the horses should have passed along,
and found some of them standing with their packs on, in a small bit of
open ground, surrounded by dense scrubs, which by chance I came to,
and nobody near. I called and waited, and at last Mr. Carmichael came
and told me that when he and Robinson debouched with the horses on
this little open space, they found that two of the animals were
missing, and that Robinson had gone to pick up their tracks. The horse
carrying my papers and instruments was one of the truants. Robinson
soon returned, not having found the track. Neither of them could tell
when they saw the horses last. I sent Mr. Carmichael to another hill
two or three miles away, that we had passed, but not inspected
yesterday, to search for water, while Robinson and I looked for the
missing horses. And lest any more should retreat during our absence,
we tied them up in two mobs. Robinson tied his lot up near a small
rock. We then separately made sweeps round, returning to the horses on
the opposite side, without success. We then went again in company, and
again on opposite sides singly, but neither tracks nor horses could be
found. Five hours had now elapsed since I first heard of their
absence. I determined to make one more circuit beyond any we had
already taken, so as to include the spot we had camped at; this
occupied a couple of hours. When I returned I was surprised to hear
that Robinson had found the horses in a small but extra dense bunch of
scrub not twenty yards from the spot where he had tied his horses up.
While I was away he had gone on top of the little stony eminence close
by, and from its summit had obtained a bird's-eye view of the ground
below, and thus perceived the two animals, which had never been absent
at all. It seemed strange to me that I could not find their tracks,
but the reason was there were no tracks to find. I took it for granted
when Carmichael told me of their absence that they were absent, but he
and Robinson were both mistaken.

It was now nearly evening, and I had been riding my horse at a fast
pace the whole day; I was afraid we could not reach the reserve water
by night. But we pushed on, Mr. Carmichael joining us, not having
found any water. At dusk we reached the small creek or gully, up in
whose rocks I had found the water on Sunday. At a certain point the
creek split in two, or rather two channels joined, and formed one, and
I suppose the same ill fate that had pursued me all day made me
mistake the proper channel, and we drove the unfortunate and limping
horses up a wretched, rocky, vile, scrubby, almost impenetrable gully,
where there was not a sup of water.

On discovering my error, we had to turn them back over the same
horrible places, all rocks, dense scrubs, and triodia, until we got
them into the proper channel. When near the first little hole I had
formerly seen, I dismounted, and walked up to see how it had stood
during my absence, and was grieved to discover that the lowest and
largest hole was nearly dry. I bounded up the rocks to the next, and
there, by the blessing of Providence, was still a sufficient quantity,
as the slow trickling of the water from basin to basin had not yet
entirely ceased, though its current had sadly diminished since my last
visit only some seventy hours since.

By this time it was dark, and totally impossible to get the horses up
the gully. We had to get them over a horrible ridge of broken and
jumbled rocks, having to get levers and roll away huge boulders, to
make something like a track to enable the animals to reach the water.

Time (and labour) accomplishes all things, and in time the last
animal's thirst was quenched, and the last drop of water sucked up
from every basin. I was afraid it would not be replenished by morning.
We had to encamp in the midst of a thicket of a kind of willow acacia
with pink bark all in little curls, with a small and pretty
mimosa-like leaf. This bush is of the most tenacious nature--you may
bend it, but break it won't. We had to cut away sufficient to make an
open square, large enough for our packs, and to enable us to lie down,
also to remove the huge bunches of spinifex that occupied the space;
then, when the stones were cleared away, we had something like a place
for a camp. By this time it was midnight, and we slept, all heartily
tired of our day's work, and the night being cool we could sleep in
comfort. Our first thought in the morning was to see how the basins
looked. Mr. Carmichael went up with a keg to discover, and on his
return reported that they had all been refilled in the night, and that
the trickling continued, but less in volume. This was a great relief
to my mind; I trust the water will remain until I return from those
dismal-looking mountains to the west. I made another search during the
morning for more water, but without success, and I can only conclude
that this water was permitted by Providence to remain here in this
lonely spot for my especial benefit, for no more rain had fallen here
than at any of the other hills in the neighbourhood, nor is this one
any higher or different from the others which I visited, except that
this one had a little water and all the rest none. In gratitude
therefore to this hill I have called it Mount Udor. Mount Udor was the
only spot where water was to be found in this abominable region, and
when I left it the udor had departed also. I got two of my
riding-horses shod to-day, as the country I intended to travel over is
about half stones and half scrub. I have marked a eucalyptus or
gum-tree in this gully close to the foot of the rock where I found the
water [EG/21], as this is my twenty-first camp from Chambers' Pillar.
My position here is in latitude 23 degrees 14', longitude 130 degrees
55', and variation 3 degrees east nearly. I could not start to-day as
the newly shod horses are so tender-footed that they seem to go worse
in their shoes; they may be better to-morrow. The water still holds
out. The camp is in a confined gully, and warm, though it is
comparatively a cool day. The grass here is very poor, and the horses
wander a great deal to look for feed. Four of them could not be found
in the morning. A slight thunderstorm passed over in the night, with a
sprinkling of rain for nearly an hour, but not sufficient fell to damp
a pocket-handkerchief. It was, however, quite sufficient to damp my
hopes of a good fall. The flies are very numerous here and
troublesome. After watering my two horses I started away by myself for
the ranges out west. I went on our old tracks as far as they went,
then I visited some other hills on my line of march. As usual, the
country alternated between open stones at the foot of the hills and
dense scrubs beyond. I thought one of the beds of scrubs I got into
the densest I had ever seen, it was actually impenetrable without
cutting one's way, and I had to turn around and about in all
directions. I had the greatest difficulty to get the horse I was
leading to come on at all; I had no power over him whatever. I could
not use either a whip or a stick, and he dragged so much that he
nearly pulled me out of my saddle, so that I could hardly tell which
way I was going, and it was extremely difficult to keep anything like
a straight course. Night overtook me, and I had to encamp in the
scrubs, having travelled nearly forty miles. A few drops of rain fell;
it may have benefited the horses, but to me it was a nuisance. I was
up, off my sandy couch early enough, but had to wait for daylight
before I could get the horses; they had wandered away for miles back
towards the camp, and I had the same difficulties over again when
getting them back to where the saddles were. In seven or eight miles
after starting I got out of the scrubs. At the foot of the mountain
for which I was steering there was a little creek or gully, with some
eucalypts where I struck it. It was, as all the others had been,
scrubby, rocky, and dry. I left the horses and ascended to the top,
about 900 feet above the scrubs which surrounded it. The horizon was
broken by low ranges nearly all round, but scrubs as usual intervened
between them. I descended and walked into dozens of gullies and rocky
places, and I found some small holes and basins, but all were dry. At
this spot I was eighty miles from a sufficient supply of water; that
at the camp, forty-five miles away, may be gone by the time I return.
Under these circumstances I could not go any farther west. It was now
evening again. I left these desolate hills, the Ehrenberg Ranges of my
map, and travelled upon a different line, hoping to find a better or
less thick route through the scrubs, but it was just the same, and
altogether abominable. Night again overtook me in the direful scrubs,
not very far from the place at which I had slept the previous night;
the most of the day was wasted in an ineffectual search for water.

On Sunday morning, the 29th September, having hobbled my horses so
short, although the scrubs were so thick, they were actually in sight
at dawn; I might as well have tied them up. Starting at once, I
travelled to one or two hills we had passed by, but had not inspected
before. I could find no water anywhere. It was late when I reached the
camp, and I was gladdened to find the party still there, and that the
water supply had held out so long. On the following morning, Monday,
the 30th of September, it was at a very low ebb; the trickling had
ceased in the upper holes, though it was still oozing into the lower
ones, so that it was absolutely necessary to pack up and be off from
this wretched place. It was an expedition in itself to get water for
the camp, from the rock basins above. The horses dreaded to approach
it on account of their tender feet. It required a lot of labour to get
sufficient firewood to boil a quart pot, for, although we were camped
in a dense thicket, the small wood of which it was composed was all
green, and useless for firewood.

I intended to retreat from here to-day, but just as Robinson was
starting to find the horses a shower of rain came on, and hoping it
might end in a heavier fall, I decided to remain until to-morrow, to
give the rain a chance,--especially as, aided by the slight rain, the
horses could do without a drink, there now being only one drink
remaining, as the trickling had entirely ceased, though we yet had the
little holes full. The rain fell in a slight and gentle shower two or
three hours, but it left no trace of its fall, even upon the rocks, so
that our water supply was not increased by one pint.

To-morrow I am off; it is useless to remain in a region such as this.
But where shall I go next? The creek I had last got water in, might
even now be dry. I determined to try and reach it farther down its
channel. If it existed beyond where I left it, I expected, in
twenty-five to thirty miles, in a southerly direction, to strike it
again: therefore, I decided to travel in that direction. A few
quandongs, or native peach trees, exist amongst these gullies; also a
tree that I only know by the name of the corkwood tree. ("Sesbania
grandiflora," Baron Mueller says, "North-Western Australia; to the
verge of the tropics; Indian Archipelago; called in Australia the
corkwood tree; valuable for various utilitarian purposes. The
red-flowered variety is grandly ornamented. Dr. Roxburgh recommends
the leaves and young pods as an exquisite spinach; the plant is shy of
frost.") The wood is soft, and light in weight and colour. It is by no
means a handsome tree. It grows about twenty feet high. Generally two
or three are huddled together, as though growing from one stem. Those
I saw were nearly all dead. They grow in the little water channels.
The ants here, as in nearly the whole of Tropical Australia, build
nests from four to six feet high--in some other parts I have known
them twenty--to escape, I suppose, from the torrents of rain that at
times fall in these regions: the height also protects their eggs and
stores from the fires the natives continually keep burning. This
burning, perhaps, accounts for the conspicuous absence of insects and
reptiles. One night, however, I certainly saw glowworms. These I have
only seen in one other region in Australia--near Geelong, in Victoria.
A tree called the native poplar (Codonocarpus cotinifolius) is also
found growing in the scrubs and water-channels of this part of the
country. The climate of this region appears very peculiar. Scarcely a
week passes without thunderstorms and rain; but the latter falls in
such small quantities that it is almost useless. It is evidently on
this account that there are no waters or watercourses deserving of the
name. I should like to know how much rain would have to fall here
before any could be discovered lying on the ground. All waters found
in this part of the country must be got out of pure sand, in a water
channel or pure rock. The native orange-tree grows here, but the
specimens I have met are very poor and stunted. The blood-wood-trees,
or red gum-trees, which always enliven any landscape where they are
found, also occur. They are not, however, the magnificent vegetable
structures which are known in Queensland and Western Australia, but
are mostly gnarled and stunted. They also grow near the watercourses.

The 1st October broke bright and clear, and I was only too thankful to
get out of this horrible region and this frightful encampment, into
which the fates had drawn me, alive. When the horses arrived, there
was only just enough water for all to drink; but one mare was away,
and Robinson said she had foaled. The foal was too young to walk or
move; the dam was extremely poor, and had been losing condition for
some time previously; so Robinson went back, killed the foal, and
brought up the mare. Now there was not sufficient water to satisfy her
when she did come. Mr. Carmichael and I packed up the horses, while
Robinson was away upon his unpleasant mission. When he brought her up,
the mare looked the picture of misery. At last I turned my back upon
this wretched camp and region; and we went away to the south. It was
half-past two o'clock when we got clear from our prison.

It is almost a work of supererogation to make many further remarks on
the character of this region--I mean, of course, since we left the
Finke. I might, at a word, condemn it as a useless desert. I will,
however, scarcely use so sweeping a term. I can truly say it is dry,
stony, scrubby, and barren, and this in my former remarks any one who
runs can read. I saw very few living creatures, but it is occasionally
visited by its native owners, to whom I do not grudge the possession
of it. Occasionally the howls of the native dog (Canis familiaris)--or
dingo as he is usually called--were heard, and their footprints in
sandy places seen. A small species of kangaroo, known as the scrub
wallaby, were sometimes seen, and startled from their pursuit of
nibbling at the roots of plants, upon which they exist; but the scrubs
being so dense, and their movements so rapid, it was utterly
impossible to get a shot at them. Their greatest enemy--besides the
wild black man and the dingo--is the large eagle-hawk, which, though
flying at an enormous height, is always on the watch; but it is only
when the wallaby lets itself out, on to the stony open, that the enemy
can swoop down upon it. The eagle trusses it with his talons, smashes
its head with its beak to quiet it, and, finally, if a female, flies
away with the victim to its nest for food for its young, or if a male
bird, to some lonely rock or secluded tarn, to gorge its fill alone. I
have frequently seen these eagles swoop on to one, and, while
struggling with its prey, have galloped up and secured it myself,
before the dazed wallaby could collect its senses. Other birds of
prey, such as sparrow-hawks, owls, and mopokes (a kind of owl),
inhabit this region, but they are not numerous. Dull-coloured, small
birds, that exist entirely without water, are found in the scrubs; and
in the mornings they are sometimes noisy, but not melodious, when
there is a likelihood of rain; and the smallest of Australian
ornithology, the diamond bird (Amadina) of Gould, is met with at
almost every watering place. Reptiles and insects, as I have said, are
scarce, on account of the continual fires the natives use in their
perpetual hunt for food.


CHAPTER 1.5. FROM 1ST TO 15TH OCTOBER, 1872.

A bluff hill.
Quandong trees.
The mulga tree.
Travel South-south-east.
Mare left behind.
Native peaches.
Short of water.
Large tree.
Timbered ridges.
Horses suffer from thirst.
Pine-trees.
Native encampments.
Native paintings in caves.
Peculiar crevice.
A rock tarn.
A liquid prize.
Caverns and caves.
A pretty oasis.
Ripe figs.
Recover the mare.
Thunder and lightning.
Ornamented caves.
Hands of glory.
A snake in a hole.
Heavy dew.
Natives burning the country.
A rocky eminence.
Waterless region.
Cheerless view.
A race of Salamanders.
Circles of fire.
Wallaby and pigeons.
Wallaby traps.
Return to depot.
Water diminishing.
Glen Edith.
Mark trees.
The tarn of Auber.
Landmarks to it.
Seeds sown.
Everything in miniature.
Journey south.
Desert oaks.
A better region.
Kangaroos and emus.
Desert again.
A creek channel.
Water by scratching.
Find more.
Splendid grass.
Native signs.
Farther south.
Beautiful green.
Abundance of water.
Follow the channel.
Laurie's Creek.
Vale of Tempe.
A gap or pass.
Without water.
Well-grassed plain.
Native well.
Dry rock holes.
Natives' fires.
New ranges.
High mountain.
Return to creek.
And Glen Edith.
Description of it.

On starting from Mount Udor, on the 1st October, our road lay at first
over rocks and stones, then for two or three miles through thick
scrubs. The country afterwards became a trifle less scrubby, and
consisted of sandhills, timbered with casuarina, and covered, as
usual, with triodia. In ten miles we passed a low bluff hill, and
camped near it, without any water. On the road we saw several quandong
trees, and got some of the ripe fruit. The day was warm and sultry;
but the night set in cool, if not cold. Mr. Carmichael went to the top
of the low bluff, and informed me of the existence of low ridges,
bounding the horizon in every direction except to the
south-south-east, and that the intervening country appeared to be
composed of sandhills, with casuarinas, or mulga scrubs.

In Baron von Mueller's extraordinary work on Select Extra-tropical
Plants, with indications of their native countries, and some of their
uses, these remarks occur:--"Acacia aneura, Ferd. v. Mueller. Arid
desert--interior of extra tropic Australia. A tree never more than
twenty-five feet high. The principal 'mulga' tree. Mr. S. Dixon
praises it particularly as valuable for fodder of pasture animals;
hence it might locally serve for ensilage. Mr. W. Johnson found in the
foliage a considerable quantity of starch and gum, rendering it
nutritious. Cattle and sheep browse on the twigs of this, and some
allied species, even in the presence of plentiful grass; and are much
sustained by such acacias in seasons of protracted drought.
Dromedaries in Australia crave for the mulga as food. Wood excessively
hard, dark-brown; used, preferentially, by the natives for boomerangs,
sticks with which to lift edible roots, and shafts of phragmites,
spears, wommerahs, nulla-nullas, and jagged spear ends. Mr. J.H.
Maiden determined the percentage of mimosa tannic acid in the
perfectly dry bark as 8.62." The mulga bears a small woody fruit
called the mulga apple. It somewhat resembles the taste of apples, and
is sweet. If crab apples, as is said, were the originals of all the
present kinds, I imagine an excellent fruit might be obtained from the
mulga by cultivation. As this tree is necessarily so often mentioned
in my travels, the remarks of so eminent a botanist upon it cannot be
otherwise than welcome.

In the direction of south-south-east Mr. Carmichael said the country
appeared most open. A yellow flower, of the immortelle species, which
I picked at this little bluff, was an old Darling acquaintance; the
vegetation, in many respects, resembles that of the River Darling.
There was no water at this bluff, and the horses wandered all over the
country during the night, in mobs of twos and threes. It was midday
before we got away. For several hours we kept on south-south-east,
over sandhills and through casuarina timber, in unvarying monotony. At
about five o'clock the little mare that had foaled yesterday gave in,
and would travel no farther. We were obliged to leave her amongst the
sandhills.

We continued until we had travelled forty miles from Mount Udor, but
no signs of a creek or any place likely to produce or hold water had
been found. The only difference in the country was that it was now
more open, though the spinifex was as lively as ever.

We passed several quandong trees in full fruit, of which we ate a
great quantity; they were the most palatable, and sweetest I have ever
eaten. We also passed a few Currajong-trees (Brachychiton). At this
point we turned nearly east. It was, however, now past sundown, too
dark to go on any farther, and we had again to encamp without water,
our own small supply being so limited that we could have only a third
of a pint each, and we could not eat anything in consequence. The
horses had to be very short-hobbled to prevent their straying, and we
passed the night under the umbrage of a colossal Currajong-tree. The
unfortunate horses had now been two days and nights without water, and
could not feed; being so short-hobbled, they were almost in sight of
the camp in the morning. From the top of a sandhill I saw that the
eastern horizon was bounded by timbered ridges, and it was not very
probable that the creek I was searching for could lie between us and
them. Indeed, I concluded that the creek had exhausted itself, not far
from where we had left it. The western horizon was now bounded by low
ridges, continuous for many miles. I decided to make for our last camp
on the creek, distant some five-and-twenty miles north-east. At five
miles after starting, we came upon a mass of eucalypts which were not
exactly gum-trees, though of that family, and I thought this might be
the end of the exhausted creek channel, only the timber grew
promiscuously on the tops of the sandhills, as in the lower ground
between them. There was no appearance of any flow of water ever having
passed by these trees, and indeed they looked more like gigantic
mallee-trees than gums, only that they grew separately. They covered a
space of about half a mile wide. From here I saw that some ridges were
right before me, at a short distance, but where our line of march
would intersect them they seemed so scrubby and stony I wished to
avoid them. At one point I discerned a notch or gap. The horses were
now very troublesome to drive, the poor creatures being very bad with
thirst. I turned on the bearing that would take me back to the old
creek, which seemed the only spot in this desolate region where water
could be found, and there we had to dig to get it. At one place on the
ridges before us appeared a few pine-trees (Callitris) which enliven
any region they inhabit, and there is usually water in their
neighbourhood. The rocks from which the pines grew were much broken;
they were yet, however, five or six miles away. We travelled directly
towards them, and upon approaching, I found the rocks upheaved in a
most singular manner, and a few gum-trees were visible at the foot of
the ridge. I directed Carmichael and Robinson to avoid the stones as
much as possible, while I rode over to see whether there was a creek
or any other place where water might be procured. On approaching the
rocks at the foot of the ridge, I found several enormous overhanging
ledges of sandstone, under which the natives had evidently been
encamped long and frequently; and there was the channel of a small
watercourse scarcely more than six feet wide. I rode over to another
overhanging ledge and found it formed a verandah wide enough to make a
large cave; upon the walls of this, the natives had painted strange
devices of snakes, principally in white; the children had scratched
imperfect shapes of hands with bits of charcoal. The whole length of
this cave had frequently been a large encampment. Looking about with
some hopes of finding the place where these children of the wilderness
obtained water, I espied about a hundred yards away, and on the
opposite side of the little glen or valley, a very peculiar looking
crevice between two huge blocks of sandstone, and apparently not more
than a yard wide. I rode over to this spot, and to my great delight
found a most excellent little rock tarn, of nearly an oblong shape,
containing a most welcome and opportune supply of the fluid I was so
anxious to discover. Some green slime rested on a portion of the
surface, but the rest was all clear and pure water. My horse must have
thought me mad, and any one who had seen me might have thought I had
suddenly espied some basilisk, or cockatrice, or mailed saurian; for
just as the horse was preparing to dip his nose in the water he so
greatly wanted, I turned him away and made him gallop off after his
and my companions, who were slowly passing away from this liquid
prize. When I hailed, and overtook them, they could scarcely believe
that our wants were to be so soon and so agreeably relieved. There was
abundance of water for all our requirements here, but the approach was
so narrow that only two horses could drink at one time, and we had
great difficulty in preventing some of the horses from precipitating
themselves, loads and all, into the inviting fluid. No one who has not
experienced it, can imagine the pleasure which the finding of such a
treasure confers on the thirsty, hungry, and weary traveller; all his
troubles for the time are at an end. Thirst, that dire affliction that
besets the wanderer in the Australian wilds, at last is quenched; his
horses, unloaded, are allowed to roam and graze and drink at will,
free from the encumbrance of hobbles, and the traveller's other
appetite of hunger is also at length appeased, for no matter what food
one may carry, it is impossible to eat it without water. This was
truly a mental and bodily relief. After our hunger had been satisfied
I took a more extended survey of our surroundings, and found that we
had dropped into a really very pretty little spot.

Low sandstone hills, broken and split into most extraordinary shapes,
forming huge caves and caverns, that once no doubt had been some of
the cavernous depths of the ocean, were to be seen in every direction;
little runnels, with a few gum-trees upon them, constituted the
creeks. Callitris or cypress pines, ornamented the landscape, and a
few blood-wood or red gum-trees also enlivened the scene. No
porcupine, but real green grass made up a really pretty picture, to
the explorer at least. This little spot is indeed an oasis. I had
climbed high hills, traversed untold miles of scrub, and gone in all
directions to try and pick up the channel of a wretched dry creek,
when all of a sudden I stumbled upon a perfect little paradise. I
found the dimensions of this little tarn are not very large, nor is
the quantity of water in it very great, but untouched and in its
native state it is certainly a permanent water for its native owners.
It has probably not been filled since last January or February, and it
now contains amply sufficient water to enable it to last until those
months return, provided that no such enormous drinkers as horses draw
upon it; in that case it might not last a month. I found the actual
water was fifty feet long, by eight feet wide, and four feet deep; the
rocks in which the water lies are more than twenty feet high. The main
ridges at the back are between 200 and 300 feet high. The native
fig-tree (Ficus orbicularis) grows here most luxuriantly; there are
several of them in full fruit, which is delicious when thoroughly
ripe. I had no thought of deserting this welcome little spot for a few
days. On the following morning Mr. Carmichael and I loaded a
pack-horse with water and started back into the scrub to where we left
the little mare the day before yesterday. With protractor and paper I
found the spot we left her at bore from this place south 70 degrees
west, and that she was now no more than thirteen or fourteen miles
away, though we had travelled double the distance since we left her.
We therefore travelled upon that bearing, and at thirteen and a half
miles we cut our former track at about a quarter of a mile from where
we left the mare. We soon picked up her track and found she had
wandered about a mile, although hobbled, from where we left her. We
saw her standing, with her head down, under an oak tree truly
distressed. The poor little creature was the picture of misery, her
milk was entirely gone--she was alive, and that was all that could be
said of her. She swallowed up the water we brought with the greatest
avidity; and I believe could have drank as much as a couple of camels
could have carried to her. We let her try to feed for a bit with the
other three horses, and then started back for the tarn. On this line
we did not intersect any of the eucalyptus timber we had passed
through yesterday. The mare held up very well until we were close to
the camp, when she gave in again; but we had to somewhat severely
persuade her to keep moving, and at last she had her reward by being
left standing upon the brink of the water, where she was [like Cyrus
when Queen Thomeris had his head cut off into a receptacle filled with
blood] enabled to drink her fill.

In the night heavy storm-clouds gathered o'er us, and vivid lightnings
played around the rocks near the camp: a storm came up and seemed to
part in two, one half going north and the other south; but just before
daybreak we were awakened by a crash of thunder that seemed to split
the hills; and we heard the wrack as though the earth and sky would
mingle; but only a few drops of rain fell, too little to leave any
water, even on the surface of the flat rocks close to the camp. This
is certainly an extraordinary climate. I do not believe a week ever
passes without a shower of rain, but none falls to do any good: one
good fallen in three or even six months, beginning now, would be
infinitely more gratifying, to me at least; but I suppose I must take
it as I find it. The rain that does fall certainly cools the
atmosphere a little, which is a partial benefit.

I found several more caves to-day up in the rocks, and noticed that
the natives here have precisely the same method of ornamenting them as
the natives of the Barrier Range and mountains east of the Darling.
You see the representation of the human hand here, as there, upon the
walls of the caves: it is generally coloured either red or black. The
drawing is done by filling the mouth with charcoal powder if the
device is to be b

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