Part 14 (1/2)

The geological character of the country was exactly similar to that we had been in so long, entirely of fossil formation, with a calcareous oolitic limestone forming the upper crusts, and though this was occasionally concealed by sand on the surface, we always were stopped by it in digging; it was seemingly a very recent deposit, full of marine sh.e.l.ls, in every stage of petrifaction. Granite we had not seen for some time, though I have no doubt that it occasionally protrudes; a small piece, found near an encampment of the natives, and evidently brought there by them, clearly proved the existence of this rock at no very great distance, probably small elevations of granite may occasionally be found among the scrubs, similar to those we had so frequently met with in the same character of country. Another substance found at one of the native encampments, and more interesting to us, not having been before met with, was a piece of pure flint, of exactly the same character as the best gun flint. This probably had been brought from the neighbourhood of the Great Bight, in the cliffs of which Captain Flinders imagined he saw chalk, and where I hoped that some change in the geological formation of the country would lead to an improvement in its general appearance and character.

The weather had been (with the exception of one or two hot days) unusually cold and favourable for the time of year. Our horses had enjoyed a long rest, and though the dry state of the gra.s.s had prevented them from recovering their condition, I hoped they were stronger and in better spirits, and determined to make one more effort to get round the head of the Bight;--if unsuccessful this time, I knew it would be final, as I should no longer have the means of making any future trial, for I fully made up my mind to take all our best and strongest animals, and either succeed in the attempt or lose all.

On the 29th, I commenced making preparations, and on the following day left the camp, the sheep, and four horses in charge of Mr. Scott and the youngest of the native boys, whilst I proceeded myself, accompanied by the overseer and eldest native boy on horseback, and a man driving a dray with three horses, to cross once more through the scrub to the westward.

We took with us three bags of flour, a number of empty casks and kegs, and two pack-saddles, besides spades and buckets, and such other minor articles as were likely to be required. It was late in the day when we arrived at the plains under the sand hills; and though we had brought our six best and strongest horses, they were greatly f.a.gged with their day's work. We had still to take them some distance to the water, and back again to the gra.s.s. At the water we found traces of a great many natives who appeared to have left only in the morning, and who could not be very far away; none were however seen.

December 31.--We remained in camp to rest the horses, and took the opportunity of carrying up all the water we could, every time the animals went backwards and forwards, to a large cask which had been fixed on the dray. The taste of the water was much worse than when we had been here before, being both salter and more bitter; this, probably, might arise from the well having been dug too deep, or from the tide having been higher than usual, though I did not notice that such had been the case.

In the afternoon we buried the three bags of flour we had brought headed up in a cask.

January 1, 1841.--This morning I went down with the men to a.s.sist in watering the horses, and upon returning to the camp, found my black boy familiarly seated among a party of natives who had come up during our absence. Two of them were natives I had seen to the north-west, and had been among the party whose presence at the plains, on the 5th of December, when I was surrounded by so many difficulties, had proved so annoying to us at the time, and so fatal in its consequences to our horses. They recognised me at once, and apparently described to the other natives, the circ.u.mstances under which they had met me, lamenting most pathetically the death of the horses; the dead bodies of which they had probably seen in their route to the water. Upon examining their weapons they shewed us several that were headed with flint, telling us that they procured it to the north-west, thus confirming my previous conjectures as to the existence of flint in that direction. To our inquiries about water, they still persisted that there was none inland, and that it took them five days, from where we were, to travel to that at the head of the Bight. No other, they said, existed in any direction near us, except a small hole to the north-west, among some sand hills, about two miles off; these they pointed out, and offered to go with me and shew me the place where the water was. I accepted the offer, and proceeded to the sand-drifts, accompanied by one of them. On our arrival he shewed me the remains of a large deep hole that had been dug in one of the sandy flats; but in which the water was now inaccessible, from the great quant.i.ty of sand that had drifted in and choked it up. By forcing a spear down to a considerable depth, the native brought it out moist, and shewed it me to prove that he had not been deceiving me. I now returned to the camp, more than ever disposed to credit what I had been told relative to the interior. I had never found the natives attempt to hide from us any waters that they knew of, on the contrary, they had always been eager and ready to point them out, frequently accompanying us for miles, through the heat and amongst scrub, to shew us where they were. I had, therefore, no reason to doubt the accuracy of their statements when they informed me that there was none inland! Many different natives, and at considerable intervals of country apart, had all united in the same statement, and as far as I had yet been able to examine so arid a country personally, my own observations tended to confirm the truth of what they had told me.

In the evening several of the natives went down with the men to water the horses, and when there drank a quant.i.ty of water that was absolutely incredible, each man taking from three to four quarts, and this in addition to what they got at the camp during the earlier part of the day.

Strange that a people who appear to do with so little water, when traversing the deserts, should use it in such excess when the opportunity of indulgence occurs to them, yet such have I frequently observed to be the case, and especially on those occasions where they have least food.

It would seem that, accustomed generally to have the stomach distended after meals, they endeavour to produce this effect with water, when deprived of the opportunity of doing so with more solid substances. At night the natives all encamped with us in the plain.

January 2.--Having watered the horses early, we left the encampment, accompanied by some of the natives, to push once more to the north-west.

On the dray we had eighty-five gallons of water; but as we had left all our flour, and some other articles, I hoped we should get on well. The heavy nature of the road, however, again told severely upon the horses: twice we had to unload the dray, and at last, after travelling only fourteen miles, the horses could go no further; I was obliged, therefore, to come to a halt, and decide what was best to be done. There appeared to be a disastrous fatality attending all our movements in this wretched region, which was quite inexplicable. Every time that we had attempted to force a pa.s.sage through it, we had been baffled and driven back. Twice I had been obliged to abandon our horses before; and on the last of these occasions had incurred a loss of the three best of them; now, after giving them a long period of rest, and respite from labour, and after taking every precaution which prudence or experience could suggest, I had the mortification of finding that we were in the same predicament we had been in before, and with as little prospect of accomplis.h.i.+ng our object.

Having but little time for deliberation, I at once ordered the overseer and man to take the horses back to the water, and give them two days rest there, and then to rejoin us again on the third, whilst I and the native boy would remain with the dray, until their return. The natives also remained with us for the first night; but finding we still continued in camp, they left on the following morning, which I was sorry for, as I hoped one would have been induced to go with us to the Great Bight.

On the fifth of January, the overseer and man returned with the horses; but so little had they benefited by their two days rest, that upon being yoked up, and put to the dray, they would not move it. We were obliged, therefore, to unload once more, and lighten the load by burying a cask of water, and giving another to the horses. After this, we succeeded in getting them along, with the remainder, to the undulating plains; and here we halted for the night, after a stage of only seven miles, but one, which, short as it was, had nearly worn out the draught horses. Here we dug a large hole, and buried twenty-two gallons of water, for my own horse, and that of the black boy, on our return; and as I determined to take a man with me, with a pack-horse, nine gallons more were buried apart from the other, for them, so that when the man got his cask of water, he might not disturb ours, or leave traces by which the natives could discover it.

January 6.--Sending back the dray with the overseer, at the first dawn of day, I and the native boy proceeded to the north-west, accompanied by the man leading a pack-horse with twelve gallons of water. The day turned out hot, and the road was over a very heavy sandy country; but by eleven o'clock we had accomplished a distance of seventeen miles, and had reached the furthest point from which I turned back on the 1st December.

I walked alternately with the boy, so as not to oppress the riding horses, but the man walked all the way.

The weather was most intensely hot, a strong wind blowing from the north-east, throwing upon us an oppressive and scorching current of heated air, like the hot blast of a furnace. There was no misunderstanding the nature of the country from which such a wind came; often as I had been annoyed by the heat, I had never experienced any thing like it before. Had anything been wanting to confirm my previous opinion of the arid and desert character of the great ma.s.s of the interior of Australia, this wind would have been quite sufficient for that purpose. From those who differ from me in opinion (and some there are who do so whose intelligence and judgment ent.i.tle their opinion to great respect), I would ask, could such a wind be be wafted over an inland sea? or could it have pa.s.sed over the supposed high, and perhaps snowcapped mountains of the interior.

We were all now suffering greatly from the heat; the man who was with me was quite exhausted: under the annoyances of the moment, his spirits failed him, and giving way to his feelings of fatigue and thirst, he lay rolling on the ground, and groaning in despair; all my efforts to rouse him were for a long time in vain, and I could not even induce him to get up to boil a little tea for himself. We had halted about eleven in the midst of a low sandy flat, not far from the sea, thinking, that by a careful examination, we might find a place where water could be procured by digging. There were, however, no trees or bushes near us; and the heat of the sun, and the glare of the sand, were so intolerable, that I was obliged to get up the horses, and compel the man to go on a little further to seek for shelter.

Proceeding one mile towards the sea, we came to a projecting rock upon its sh.o.r.es; and as there was no hope of a better place being found, I tied up my horses near it; the rock was not large enough to protect them entirely from the sun, but by standing close under it, their heads and necks were tolerably shaded. For ourselves, a recess of the rock afforded a delightful retreat, whilst the immediate vicinity of the sea enabled us every now and then to take a run, and plunge amidst its breakers, and again return to the shelter of the cavern. For two or three hours we remained in, under the protection of the rock, without clothes, and occasionally bathing to cool ourselves. The native boy and I derived great advantage from thus dipping in the sea, but it was a long time before I could induce the man to follow our example, either by persuasion or threats; his courage had failed him, and he lay moaning like a child.

At last I succeeded in getting him to strip and bathe, and he at once found the benefit of it, becoming in a short time comparatively cool and comfortable. We then each had a little more tea, and afterwards attempted to dig for water among the sand-hills. The sand, however, was so loose, that it ran in faster than we could throw it out, and we were obliged to give up the attempt.

As the afternoon was far advanced, we saddled the horses, and pushed on again for five miles, hoping, but in vain, to find a little gra.s.s. At night we halted among the sandy ridges behind the seash.o.r.e, and after giving the horses four quarts of oats and a bucket of water a-piece, we were obliged to tie them up, there not being a blade of gra.s.s anywhere about. The wind at night changed to the south-west, and was very cold, chilling us almost as much as the previous heat had oppressed us. These sudden and excessive changes in temperature induce great susceptibility in the system, and expose the traveller to frequent heats and chills that cannot be otherwise than injurious to the const.i.tution.

January 7.--Having concealed some water, provisions, and the pack-saddle at the camp, I sent the man back with the pack-horse to encamp at the undulating plains, where nine gallons of water had been left for him and his horse, and the following day he was to rejoin the overseer at the sand hills.

To the latter I sent a note, requesting him to send two fresh horses to meet me at the plains on the 15th of January, for, from the weak condition of the animals we had with us, and from the almost total absence of gra.s.s for them, I could not but dread lest we might be obliged to abandon them too, and in this case, if we did not succeed in finding water, we should perhaps have great difficulty in returning ourselves.

As soon as the man was gone, we once more moved on to the north-west, through the same barren region of heavy sandy ridges, entirely dest.i.tute of gra.s.s or timber. After travelling through this for ten miles, we came upon a native pathway, and following it under the hummocks of the coast for eight miles, lost it at some bare sand-drifts, close to the head of the Great Bight, where we had at last arrived, after our many former ineffectual attempts.

Following the general direction the native pathway had taken, we ascended the sand-drifts, and finding the recent tracks of natives, we followed them from one sand-hill to another, until we suddenly came upon four persons encamped by a hole dug for water in the sand. We had so completely taken them by surprise, that they were a good deal alarmed, and seizing their spears, a.s.sumed an offensive att.i.tude. Finding that we did not wish to injure them, they became friendly in their manner, and offered us some fruit, of which they had a few quarts on a piece of bark.

This fruit grows upon a low brambly-looking bush, upon the sand-hills or in the flats, where the soil is of a saline nature. It is found also in the plains bordering upon the lower parts of the Murrumbidgee, but in much greater abundance along the whole line of coast to the westward. The berry is oblong, about the shape and size of an English sloe, is very pulpy and juicy, and has a small pyramidal stone in the centre, which is very hard and somewhat indented. When ripe it is a dark purple, a clear red, or a bright yellow, for there are varieties. The purple is the best flavoured, but all are somewhat saline in taste. To the natives these berries are an important article of food at this season of the year, and to obtain them and the fruit of the mesembryanthemum, they go to a great distance, and far away from water. In eating the berries, the natives make use of them whole, never taking the trouble to get rid of the stones, nor do they seem to experience any ill results from so doing.

Having unsaddled the horses, we set to work to dig holes to water them; the sand, however, was very loose, and hindered us greatly. The natives, who were sitting at no great distance, observed the difficulty under which we were labouring, and one of them who appeared the most influential among them, said something to two of the others, upon which they got up and came towards us, making signs to us to get out of the hole, and let them in; having done so, one of them jumped in, and dug, in an incredibly short time, a deep narrow hole with his hands; then sitting so as to prevent the sand running in, he ladled out the water with a pint pot, emptying it into our bucket, which was held by the other native. As our horses drank a great deal, and the position of the man in the hole was a very cramped one, the two natives kept changing places with each other, until we had got all the water we required.