A Vast, Howling Wilderness Of High, Spinifex-Clad Ridges
Of Red Sand, So Close Together That In A Day's March
We crossed from sixty
to eighty ridges, so steep that often the camels had to crest them on
their knees,
And so barren and destitute of vegetation (saving spinifex)
that one marvels how even camels could pick up a living. I estimate their
average vertical height from trough to crest at fifty to sixty feet. Some
were mere rises, whilst others reached a height of considerably over one
hundred feet. Sometimes the ridges would be a quarter of a mile apart,
and sometimes ridge succeeded ridge like the waves of the sea. On October
3rd, for instance, I find that we were crossing them at a rate of ten in
forty minutes. This gives a result of 105 ridges to be negotiated in a
day's march of seven hours. Riding was almost impossible in such country
as this, for all our energies were required to urge on the poor camels.
All through, we adhered to the same plan as before, viz., doing our day's
march without a halt (excepting of course the numerous stoppages entailed
by broken nose-lines, the disarrangement of a pack, or the collapse of a
camel), having no food or water from daylight until camping-time. This,
without our previous training, would have been an almost impossible task,
for each ridge had to be climbed - there was no going round them or
picking out a low place, no tacking up the slope - straight ahead, up one
side, near the top a wrench and a snap, down goes a camel, away go the
nose-lines, a blow for the first and a knot for the second, over the
crest and down, then a few paces of flat going, then up again and down
again, and so on day after day. The heat was excessive - practically there
was no shade.
The difficulties of our journey were increased by the necessity of
crossing the ridges almost at right angles. With almost heart-breaking
regularity they kept their general trend of E. by N. and W. by S.,
causing us from our Northerly course to travel day after day against the
grain of the country. An Easterly or Westerly course would have been
infinitely less laborious, as in that case we could have travelled along
the bottom of the trough between two ridges for a great distance before
having to cross over any. The troughs and waves seem to be corrugations
in the surface of greater undulations; for during a day's march or so, on
reaching the top of one ridge, our view forwards was limited to the next
ridge, until a certain point was reached, from which we could see in
either direction; and from this point onwards the ridges sank before us
for a nearly equal distance, and then again they rose, each ridge higher
than the last. Words can give no conception of the ghastly desolation and
hopeless dreariness of the scene which meets one's eyes from the crest of
a high ridge.
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