Journey south-west.
Glens and springs.
Rough watering-place.
A marble bath.
Glassy rocks.
Swarms of ants.
Solitary tree.
An oven.
Terrible night.
And day.
Wretched appearance of the horses.
Mountains of sand.
Hopeless view.
Speculations.
In great pain.
Horses in agony.
Difficulty in watering them.
Another night of misery.
Dante's Inferno.
The waters of oblivion.
Return to the pass.
Dinner of carrion.
A smoke-house.
Tour to the east.
Singular pinnacle.
Eastern ranges.
A gum creek.
Basins of water.
Natives all around.
Teocallis.
Horrid rites.
A chip off the old block.
A wayside inn.
Gordon's Springs.
Taking Jimmy and three horses, we travelled, after clearing the pass,
on the south slopes of the range westward, crossing several small
creek-channels, which might or might not have waters in them. At
twelve miles we came to a green-looking channel and found water,
running so far down as a rocky hole, near where we crossed. We
outspanned here for an hour, as I found riding very severe toil after
my late kicking. I named this secluded but pretty little spot, Glen
Helen. It was very rough travelling ground--worse than on the northern
side of the range. Three miles farther, we crossed another running
water, and called it Edith Hull's Springs. At ten miles farther, after
crossing several channels, we turned up one, and got some water in a
very rough and stony gorge off the main channel, which was dry. There
was very poor feed, but we were compelled to remain, as there was no
other creek in sight for some miles, and the horses, although shod,
could only travel slowly over the terribly rough ground. When we
turned them out, they preferred to stand still, rather than roam about
among the rocks and boulders for food. The day was cool; the southern
horizon, the only one we could see, was bounded entirely by red
sandhills and casuarina timber. The horses ate nothing all night, and
stood almost where they were hobbled.
In this region, and in the heat of summer, the moment horses, no
matter how fat and fresh they may be, are taken away from their
companions to face the fearful country that they know is before them,
they begin to fret and fall away visibly. They will scarcely eat, and
get all the weaker in consequence, and then they require twice as much
water as they otherwise would if their insides were partly filled with
grass. When I released our three from the hobbles this morning, they
immediately pretended to feed; but this old ruse has been experienced
before, and time was now up, to move on again. They were very thirsty,
and nearly emptied the rock basin, where we had a kind of bath before
starting. Along the foot-hills over which we were obliged to travel,
the country was much rougher than yesterday; so much so, that I kept
away as much as possible. At twenty miles we turned up a
creek-channel, which proved to be a dreadful gorge, being choked up
with huge boulders of red and white granite. Among these I found a
fine rock tarn; indeed, I might call it a marble bath, for the rock
was almost pure white, and perfectly bare all round. The water was
considerably over our heads, and felt as cold as ice. It was a
dreadful place to get horses up to, and two of them fell two or three
times on the glassy, shelving, and slippery rocks. The old grey,
Buggs, hurt himself a good deal.
Time seems to fly in these places, except when you want it to do so,
and by the time the horses got down from the water the day was nearly
gone. The feed for them was very little better than at our last
night's camp, nor was the glen any less stony or rough. The day was 12
degrees hotter than yesterday; the thermometer indicated 104 degrees.
The ants in this glen were frightful; they would not allow me a
moment's rest anywhere. There was but one solitary eucalyptus or
gum-tree, and in its scanty shade they swarmed in countless myriads.
The sun poured his fiery beams full down upon us, and it was not until
he departed over the cliffs to the west that we had a moment's
respite; the place was a perfect oven.
I passed the time mostly in the marble bath, and then took a walk up
to the top of the range and could see the hills I desired to visit;
they now bore nearly south-west. So long as the sun's rays were
pouring down upon their unsheltered hides, the horses would not
attempt to eat, but when he departed they fed a little on the coarse
vegetation. This glen, like all the others in this range, swarmed with
pigeons, and we got enough for breakfast at one shot. During the hot
months, I believe whites could live entirely on pigeons in this range.
At the camp at Sladen Water they came to the water in clouds, their
very numbers sometimes preventing us getting a good shot, and we had
been living entirely on them, for now we had no other meat.
Unfortunately, our ammunition is almost exhausted, but so long as it
lasts we shall have birds. When it is gone we must eat horseflesh, and
should have been driven to do so before now, only for these birds. I
have an old horse now fattening for the knife, and I am sorry, i.e.
happy, to say, whenever I inspect him he looks better. The one I mean
is the old sideways-going Terrible Billy. Poor old creature! To work
so many years as he has done for man, and then to be eaten at last,
seems a hard fate; but who or what can escape that inexorable shadow,
death?
It may be the destiny of some of ourselves to be eaten; for I fully
believe the natives of these regions look upon all living organisms as
grist for their insatiable mills. As night came on, I was compelled to
lie down at last, but was so bitten and annoyed by the ants, that I
had to keep moving about from place to place the whole night long,
while the [in]sensible Jimmy lay sleeping and snoring, though swarmed
over and almost carried away by the ants, as peacefully as though he
had gone to rest under the canopy of costly state, and lulled with
sounds of sweetest melody. I could not help moralising, as I often
stood near him, wondering at his peace and placidity, upon the
differences of our mental and physical conditions: here was one human
being, young and strong, certainly, sleeping away the, to me, dreary
hours of night, regaining that necessary vigour for the toils of the
coming day, totally oblivious of swarms of creeping insects, that not
only crawled all over him, but constantly bit into his flesh; while
another, who prided himself perhaps too much upon the mental powers
bestowed by God upon him, was compelled by the same insects to wander
through the whole night, from rock to rock and place to place, unable
to remain for more than a moment or two anywhere; and to whom sleep,
under such circumstances, was an utter impossibility. Not, indeed,
that the loss of sleep troubles me, for if any one could claim to be
called the sleepless one, it would be I--that is to say, when engaged
in these arduous explorations, and curtained by night and the stars;
but, although I can do without sleep, I require a certain amount of
horizontal repose, and this I could not obtain in this fearful glen.
It was, therefore, with extreme pleasure that I beheld the dawn,
and:--
"To the eastward where, cluster by cluster,
Dim stars and dull planets that muster,
Waxing wan in a world of white lustre,
That spread far and high."
No human being could have been more pleased than I at the appearance
of another day, although I was yet doomed to several hours more misery
in this dreadful gorge. The pigeons shot last night were covered
within and without by ants, although they had been put in a bag. The
horses looked wretched, even after watering, and I saw that it was
actually necessary to give them a day's rest before I ventured with
them into the frightful sandhills which I could see intervened between
us and the distant ridges. Truly the hours I spent in this hideous
gorge were hours of torture; the sun roasted us, for there was no
shade whatever to creep into; the rocks and stones were so heated that
we could neither touch, nor sit upon them, and the ants were more
tormenting than ever. I almost cried aloud for the mountains to fall
upon me, and the rocks to cover me. I passed several hours in the
marble bath, the only place the ants could not encroach upon, though
they swarmed round the edge of the water. But in the water itself were
numerous little fiendish water-beetles, and these creatures bit one
almost as badly as the ants. In the bath I remained until I was almost
benumbed by the cold. Then the sunshine and the heat in the gorge
would seem delightful for a few minutes, till I became baked with heat
again. The thermometer stood at 106 degrees in the shade of the only
tree. At three p.m. the horses came up to water. I was so horrified
with the place I could no longer remain, though Jimmy sat, and
probably slept, in the scanty one tree's shade, and seemed to pass the
time as comfortably as though he were in a fine house. In going up to
the water two of the horses again fell and hurt themselves, but the
old blear-eyed mare never slipped or fell. At four p.m. we mounted,
and rode down the glen until we got clear of the rough hills, when we
turned upon our proper course for the ridges, which, however, we could
not see. In two or three miles we entered the sandhill regions once
more, when it soon rose into hills. The triodia was as thick and
strong as it could grow. The country was not, so to say, scrubby,
there being only low bushes and scrubs on the sandhills, and casuarina
trees of beautiful outline and appearance in the hollows. When the
horses got clear of the stones they began to eat everything they could
snatch and bite at.
At fifteen miles from the gorge we encamped on a patch of dry grass.
The horses fed pretty well for a time, until the old mare began to
think it time to be off, and she soon would have led the others back
to the range. She dreaded this country, and knew well by experience
and instinct what agony was in store for her. Jimmy got them back and
short-hobbled them. There were plenty of ants here, but nothing to be
compared to the number in the gorge, and having to remove my blankets
only three or four times, I had a most delightful night's rest,
although, of course, I did not sleep. The horses were sulky and would
not eat; therefore they looked as hollow as drums, and totally unfit
to traverse the ground that was before them. However, this had to be
done, or at least attempted, and we got away early. We were in the
midst of the sandhills, and here they rose almost into mountains of
sand. It was most fatiguing to the horses, the thermometer 104 degrees
in the shade when we rested at twenty-two miles. Nor was this the
hottest time of the day. We had been plunging through the sand
mountains, and had not sighted the ridges, for thirty-seven miles,
till at length we found the nearest were pretty close to us. They
seemed very low, and quite unlikely to produce water. Reaching the
first, we ascended it, and I could see at a glance that any prospect
of finding water was utterly hopeless, as these low ridges, which ran
north and south, were merely a few oblique-lying layers of upheaved
granite, not much higher than the sandhills which surrounded them, and
there was no place where water could lodge even during rains. Not a
rise could be seen in any direction, except, of course, from where we
had come. We went on west five or six miles farther to the end of
these, just about sundown: and long, indeed, will that peculiar sunset
rest in my recollection. The sun as usual was a huge and glaring ball
of fire that with his last beams shot hot and angry glances of hate at
us, in rage at our defiance of his might. It was so strange and so
singular that only at this particular sunset, out of the millions
which have elapsed since this terrestrial ball first floated in ether,
that I, or indeed any White man, should stand upon this wretched hill,
so remote from the busy haunts of my fellow men. My speculations upon
the summit, if, indeed, so insignificant a mound can be said to have a
summit, were as wild and as incongruous as the regions which stretched
out before me. In the first place I could only conclude that no water
could exist in this region, at least as far as the sand beds extend. I
was now, though of course some distance to the south also, about
thirty miles to the west of the most western portion of the Rawlinson
Range.
From that range no object had been visible above the sandhills in any
westerly direction, except these ridges I am now upon, and from these,
if any other ranges or hills anywhere within a hundred miles of the
Rawlinson existed, I must have sighted them. The inference to be drawn
in such a case was, that in all probability this kind of country would
remain unaltered for an enormous distance, possibly to the very banks
of the Murchison River itself. The question very naturally arose,
Could the country be penetrated by man, with only horses at his
command, particularly at such a heated time of year? Oh, would that I
had camels! What are horses in such a region and such a heated
temperature as this? The animals are not physically capable of
enduring the terrors of this country. I was now scarcely a hundred
miles from the camp, and the horses had plenty of water up to nearly
halfway, but now they looked utterly unable to return. What a strange
maze of imagination the mind can wander in when recalling the names of
those separated features, the only ones at present known to supply
water in this latitude--that is to say, the Murchison River, and this
new-found Rawlinson Range, named after two Presidents of the Royal
Geographical Society of London. The late and the present, the living
and the dead, physically and metaphysically also, are not these
features, as the men, separated alike by the great gulf of the
unknown, by a vast stretch of that undiscovered country from whose
bourne no traveller returns?
The sun went down, and I returned to my youthful companion with the
horses below. We were fifty-one miles from the water we had left. The
horses were pictures of misery, old Buggs's legs had swelled greatly
from the contusions he had received in falling on the slippery rocks.
The old black mare which I rode, though a sorry hack, looked worse
than I had ever seen her before, and even the youthful and
light-heeled and -hearted Diaway hung his head, and one could almost
span him round the flanks. The miserable appearance of the animals was
caused as much by want of food as want of water, for they have
scarcely eaten a mouthful since we left the pass; indeed, all they had
seen to eat was not inviting.
We slowly left these desolate ridges behind, and at fifteen miles we
camped, Jimmy and I being both hungry and thirsty. Our small supply of
water only tantalised, without satisfying us whenever we took a
mouthful. We now found we had nothing to eat, at least nothing cooked,
and we had to sacrifice a drop of our stock of water to make a
Johnny-cake. It was late by the time we had eaten our supper, and I
told Jimmy he had better go to sleep if he felt inclined; I then
caught and tied up the horses, which had already rambled some distance
away. When I got back I found Jimmy had literally taken me at my word;
for there he was fast asleep among the coals and ashes of the fire, in
which we had cooked our cake. I rolled him over once or twice to
prevent him catching fire, but he did not awake. The night was very
warm; I tried to lay down on my rug, but I was in such pain all over
from my recent accident, that I could not remain still. I only waited
to allow Jimmy a little sleep, or else he would have fallen off his
horse, and caused more delay. I walked to, and tried to console, the
horses. Sleepless and restless, I could no longer remain.
Fast asleep is Armor lying--do not touch him, do not wake him; but
Armor had to be awakened. But first I saddled and put up everything on
the horses. Jimmy's lips were cracked and parched, and his tongue dry
and half out of his mouth; I thought the kindest way to wake him was
to pour a little water into his mouth. Up he jumped in a moment, and
away we went at three o'clock in the morning, steering by the stars
until daylight; slowly moving over sandhill after sandhill. Soon after
sunrise we fell in with our outgoing track, and continued on, though
we had great trouble to keep the horses going at all, until we reached
our old encampment of the night before last, being now only fifteen
miles from the water. For the last few miles the horses had gone so
dreadfully slow, I thought they would give in altogether. So soon as
they were unsaddled they all lay down, shivering and groaning
fearfully.
To see a horse in a state of great thirst is terrible, the natural
cavity opens to an extraordinary size, and the creature strains and
makes the most lamentable noises. Mares are generally worse in these
cases than horses. Old Buggs and the mare were nearly dead. Diaway
suffered less than the others. We had yet a small quantity of water in
our bag, and it was absolutely necessary to sacrifice it to the horses
if we wished them ever to return. We had but three pints, which we
gave to Buggs and the mare, Diaway getting none. What the others got
was only just enough to moisten their tongues. Leaving this place at
eleven a.m., we reached the gorge at sundown, travelling at the rate
of only two miles an hour. The day was hot, 104 degrees at eleven a.m.
When we took the saddles off the horses, they fell, as they could only
stand when in motion--old Buggs fell again in going up the gorge; they
all fell, they were so weak, and it took nearly an hour to get them up
to the bath. They were too weak to prevent themselves from slipping
in, swimming and drinking at the same time; at last old Buggs touched
the bottom with his heels, and stood upon his hind-legs with his
forefeet against the rock wall, and his head bent down between, and
drank thus. I never saw a horse drink in that fashion before.
It was very late when we got them back to the camp-tree, where we let
them go without hobbles. The ants were as rampant as ever, and I
passed another night in walking up and down the glen. Towards midnight
the horses came again for water, but would not return, preferring to
remain till morning rather than risk a passage down in the dark.
I went right up to the top of the mountain, and got an hour's peace
before the sun rose. In the morning all the horses' legs were puffed
and swelled, and they were frightened to move from the water. I had
great trouble in getting them down at all. It was impossible to ride
them away, and here we had to remain for another day, in this Inferno.
Not Dante's, gelid lowest circle of Hell, or city of Dis, could cause
more anguish, to a forced resident within its bounds, than did this
frightful place to me. Even though Moses did omit to inflict ants on
Pharaoh, it is a wonder Dante never thought to have a region of them
full of wicked wretches, eternally tortured with their bites, and
stings, and smells. Dante certainly was good at imagining horrors. But
imagination can't conceive the horror of a region swarming with ants
and then Dante never lived in an ant country, and had no conception
what torture such creatures can inflict. The smaller they are the more
terrible. My only consolation here was my marble bath, which the
horses had polluted; within its cool and shady depths I could alone
find respite from my tormentors. Oh, how earnestly did I wish that its
waters were the waters of oblivion, or that I could quaff some kind
nepenthe, which would make me oblivious of my woes, for the persistent
attacks of the ants unceasingly continued
"From night till morn, from morn till dewy eve."
Here of course we had no dewy eve. Only one slight source of pleasure
at length occurred to me, and that was, that Jimmy began to shift
about a bit at last. On the 26th, with what delight I departed from
this odious gorge after another night of restlessness, agony, and
misery, may perhaps be imagined, though of course I was indebted to
the glen for water, and unless we actually give up our lives, we
cannot give up that. There was a good deal of water in this bath, as
may be supposed when horses could swim about in it. I called it
Edith's Marble Bath, after my niece, having named Glen Edith also
after her on my former expedition. The stone here is not actually
marble, though very like it. I saw no limestone in this range; the
only approach to it is in the limestone formation in the bed of the
ancient Lake Christopher, mentioned as lying to the west of the
Rawlinson Range. The stone here was a kind of milky quartz. We kept
away as much as possible off the rough slopes of the range, and got to
Glen Helen at night, but old Buggs knocked up, and we had to lead,
beat, and drive him on foot, so that it was very late before we got to
the glen. We got all three horses back to the pass early the next day.
No natives had appeared, but the horses had never been seen since I
left. Oh, didn't I sleep that night! no ants. Oh, happiness! I hadn't
slept for a week.
The next day, the 28th of February, Gibson and Jimmy went to look for
the mob of horses. There was a watering-place about two miles and a
half south from here, where emus used to water, and where the horses
did likewise; there they found all the horses. There was a very marked
improvement in their appearance, they had thriven splendidly. There is
fine green feed here, and it is a capital place for an explorer's
depot, it being such an agreeable and pretty spot. Gibson and Jimmy
went to hunt for emus, but we had none for supper. We got a supply of
pigeons for breakfast. Each day we more deeply lament that the end of
our ammunition is at hand. For dinner we got some hawks, crows, and
parrots. I don't know which of these in particular disagreed with me,
but I suppose the natural antipathy of these creatures to one another,
when finding themselves somewhat crowded in my interior, was casus
belli enough to set them quarrelling even after death and burial; all
I knew was the belli was going on in such a peculiar manner that I had
to abandon my dinner almost as soon as I had eaten it. It is now
absolutely necessary to kill a horse for food, as our ammunition is
all but gone. Mr. Tietkens and I went to find a spot to erect a
smoke-house, which required a soft bank for a flue; we got a place
half a mile away. Thermometer 104 degrees. Mr. Tietkens and I
commenced operations at the smoke-house, and the first thing we did
was to break the axe handle. Gibson, who thought he was a carpenter,
blacksmith, and jack-of-all-trades by nature, without art, volunteered
to make a new one, to which no one objected. The new handle lasted
until the first sapling required was almost cut in two, when the new
handle came in two also; so we had to return to the camp, while Gibson
made another handle on a new principle. With this we worked while
Gibson and Jimmy shod a couple of horses. A pair of poking brutes of
horses are always away by themselves, and Mr. Tietkens and I went to
look for, but could not find them. We took the shovel and filled up
the emu water-hole with sand, so that the horses had to show
themselves with the others at the pass at night. For two or three days
we shod horses, shot pigeons, and worked at the smoke-house. I did not
like the notion of killing any of the horses, and determined to make a
trip eastwards, to see what the country in that direction was like. We
chopped up some rifle bullets for shot, to enable Gibson and Jimmy to
remain while we were away, as a retreat to Fort Mueller from here was
a bitter idea to me. Before I can attempt to penetrate to the west, I
must wait a change in the weather. The sky was again becoming cloudy,
and I had hopes of rain at the approaching equinox.
The three horses we required for the trip we put down through the
north side of the pass. On March 10th, getting our horses pretty
easily, we started early. As soon as we got clear of the pass on the
north side, almost immediately in front of us was another pass, lying
nearly east, which we reached in five miles. I called this the Weld
Pass. From hence we had a good view of the country farther east. A
curved line of abrupt-faced hills traversed the northern horizon; they
had a peculiar and wall-like appearance, and seemed to end at a
singular-looking pinnacle thirty-four or five miles away, and lying
nearly east. This abrupt-faced range swept round in a half circle,
northwards, and thence to the pinnacle. We travelled along the slopes
of the Rawlinson Range, thinking we might find some more good gorges
before it ended, we being now nearly opposite the Alice Falls. One or
two rough and stony gullies, in which there was no water, existed; the
country was very rough. I found the Rawlinson Range ended in fifteen
or sixteen miles, at the Mount Russell* mentioned before. Other ranges
rose up to the east; the intervening country seemed pretty well filled
with scrub. We pushed on for the pinnacle in the northern line, but
could not reach it by night as we were delayed en route by searching
in several places for water. The day was hot, close, cloudy, and
sultry. In front of us now the country became very scrubby as we
approached the pinnacle, and for about three miles it was almost
impenetrable. We had to stop several times and chop away limbs and
boughs to get through, when we emerged on the bank of a small gum
creek, and, turning up its channel, soon saw some green rushes in the
bed. A little further up we saw more, brighter and greener, and
amongst them a fine little pond of water. Farther up, the rocks rose
in walls, and underneath them we found a splendid basin of overflowing
water, which filled several smaller ones below. We could hear the
sound of splashing and rushing waters, but could not see from whence
those sounds proceeded. This was such an excellent place that we
decided to remain for the rest of the day. The natives were all round
us, burning the country, and we could hear their cries. This morning
we had ridden through two fresh fires, which they lit, probably, to
prevent our progress; they followed us up to this water. I suppose
they were annoyed at our finding such a remarkably well-hidden place.
It is a very singular little glen. There are several small mounds of
stones placed at even distances apart, and, though the ground was
originally all stones, places like paths have been cleared between
them. There was also a large, bare, flat rock in the centre of these
strange heaps, which were not more than two and a half feet high. I
concluded--it may be said uncharitably, but then I know some of the
ways and customs of these people--that these are small kinds of
teocallis, and that on the bare rock already mentioned the natives
have performed, and will again perform, their horrid rites of human
butchery, and that the drippings of the pellucid fountains from the
rocky basins above have been echoed and re-echoed by the dripping
fountains of human gore from the veins and arteries of their bound and
helpless victims. Though the day was hot, the shade and the water were
cool, and we could indulge in a most luxurious bath. The largest basin
was not deep, but the water was running in and out of it, over the
rocks, with considerable force. We searched about to discover by its
sound from whence it came, and found on the left-hand side a crevice
of white quartz-like stone, where the water came down from the upper
rocks, and ran away partly into the basins and partly into rushes,
under our feet. On the sloping face of the white rock, and where the
water ran down, was a small indent or smooth chip exactly the size of
a person's mouth, so that we instinctively put our lips to it, and
drank of the pure and gushing element. I firmly believe this chip out
of the rock has been formed by successive generations of the native
population, for ages placing their mouths to and drinking at this
spot; but whether in connection with any sacrificial ceremonies or no,
deponent knoweth, and sayeth not. The poet Spenser, more than three
hundred years ago, must have visited this spot--at least, in
imagination, for see how he describes it:--
"And fast beside there trickled softly down,
A gentle stream, whose murmuring waves did play
Amongst the broken stones, and made a sowne,
To lull him fast asleep, who by it lay:
The weary traveller wandering that way
Therein might often quench his thirsty heat,
And then by it, his weary limbs display;
(Whiles creeping slumber made him to forget
His former pain), and wash away his toilsome sweet."
(ILLUSTRATION: GILL'S PINNACLE.)
There is very poor grazing ground round this water. It is only
valuable as a wayside inn, or out. I called the singular feature which
points out this water to the wanderer in these western wilds, Gill's
Pinnacle, after my brother-in-law, and the water, Gordon's Springs,
after his son. In the middle of the night, rumblings of thunder were
heard, and lightnings illuminated the glen. When we were starting on
the following morning, some aborigines made their appearance, and
vented their delight at our appearance here by the emission of several
howls, yells, gesticulations, and indecent actions, and, to hem us in
with a circle of fire, to frighten us out, or roast us to death, they
set fire to the triodia all round. We rode through the flames, and
away.