The Camels Had Crossed This; And, As It Was Getting Late,
I Sent Godfrey Along Their Tracks To Rejoin The Others, Telling Him That
I Should Continue Down The Creek, And Return To Wherever They Made Camp;
To Guide Me To It They Were To Light A Fire.
I followed the creek, or
storm channel as I should rather call it, for some four miles; climbing a
Tree I could see it apparently continuing for some miles, so, feeling
that I had already had a fair tramp, I noted the direction of the smoke
from the camp and returned to it. As luck would have it, it was the wrong
smoke; Breaden on arriving at the end hill had made a fire, and this the
evening breeze had rekindled; and the camp-fire happened to die down at
the very time it was most needed. In due course I arrived at the hill,
named Mount Colin, after poor Colin Gibson, a Coolgardie friend who had
lately died from typhoid. From the summit a noticeable flat-topped hill,
Mount Cox, named after Ernest Cox, also of Coolgardie, bears 76 degrees
about fifteen miles distant, at the end of a fair-sized range running
S.S.W. Between this range and that from which I was observing, I noticed
several belts of bloodwoods, which might be creeks, but probably are only
flats similar to that crossed by us. Picking up the tracks of the main
party, I followed them to camp, not sorry to have a rest; for it was ten
hours since Godfrey and I had had anything to eat or drink, and the rocks
were rough and the spinifex dense. I mention this, not as illustrating our
hardships, but to show what training will do; any one of us would have
been quite ready to do the day's tramp over again had any necessity
arisen.
That night as I was shooting the stars, by which I found we were in lat.
24 degrees 57 minutes, long. 125 degrees 9 minutes (dead reckoning), I
noticed several bronzewing pigeons flying down the creek which I had
followed, and on which we were camped. In the morning others observed
them flying up the watercourse. As a bronzewing drinks just after dark,
or just before daylight, this was pretty good evidence that water existed
in the direction in which the creek ran - and probably an open pool would
be found. No such luck! for we followed the channel until it no longer
was one, that is to say its banks became further apart, and lower, until
its wash was spread out in all directions over a flat whose limits were
defined by bloodwoods and grass. Here we found an old blacks' camp and
spent some time examining its neighbourhood. Little heaps of the yellow
seed of a low plant, swept together on clear spaces on the ground, and
the non-existence of any well, led us to suppose that this was merely a
travelling camp of some buck who had been sent to collect seed.
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