Having Apparently Satisfied Them That It Was Not Our Intention
To Eat Them, By Signs We Showed Them Our Pressing Need For Water - These
They Readily Understood - Doubtless Because Their Own Daily Experience Is
One Constant Hunt For Food Or Water.
Evidently we had the former with us
in the shape of camels, therefore we could only want the latter.
The
little child very soon showed great confidence, and, taking my hand, led
us over a neighbouring sand-ridge. The old lady took a great fancy to
Godfrey, and convinced us that flirting is by no means confined to
civilisation.
Leading us obliquely across the ridges we had just passed over, some two
miles from the scene of their hunting, they halted at their well. To the
North of it an almost barren ridge of sand rising to a height of perhaps
sixty feet, and running away East and West for possibly ten miles without
a break, from the crest of which we could see a limitless sea of ridges
as far as the eye could reach to the Northward (a cheerful prospect!), to
the South the undulating treeless desert of gravel we had just crossed.
Between the foot of the ridge and a stony slope the well was situated - the
usual little round hole in the sand - a small patch of roly-poly grass
making a slight difference in the appearance of the country immediately
surrounding the hole. As well as this roly-poly, we were delighted to see
a few scattered plants of parakeelia, and lost no time in unloading and
hobbling the camels, who in their turn made all haste to devour this
life-giving vegetation.
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