Twisting Round His Neck He
Would Grab At My Leg; Then, Rolling, He Would Unseat And Endeavour To Roll
On
Me; finally tiring of these tricks he would gallop off at full speed,
and run my leg against a tree,
Or do his best to sweep me off by an
overhanging branch, until I felt satisfied that he had been rightly named.
At last he realised that I was master, and after that I hardly remember
one occasion on which he gave any trouble; for the three years that I
afterwards possessed him, we were the best of friends, and he the most
gentle and biddable of beasts. Alas! that I should have had to end his
days with a bullet, and leave his bones to be picked by the dingoes of the
Great Sandy Desert.
Failing to find any gold, and being in need of flour, we made south to
Kurnalpi, through country flat and uninteresting, and arrived at that camp
just in time to secure the last two bags of flour. The town was almost
deserted, and had none of the lively and busy appearance that it presented
when I had last seen it. All who saw us praised our equipment and
forethought in having portable condensers. I am not quite sure that we
agreed with them.
Hearing that some promising country existed near Lake Roe, I decided to
make for that place, and more particularly for a small rock-hole named
Beri, at the west end of the lake. Very rough, stony hills covered with
dense scrub surround Kurnalpi on the south; once across these, flat, open
country of saltbush and samphire, rapidly changing into salt-swamp, made
travelling easy; passing over another low range of diorite, from which we
got an extensive view of Lake Lapage to the west and Lake Roe to the east,
we reached Beri, hitting off the rock with so much accuracy that even
Paddy Egan was surprised into praise of the compass. For some bushmen, be
it known, can neither understand nor appreciate the use of a compass, and,
being quite capable of finding their way back, are content to wander forth
into the bush with no guide but the sun, taking no notes of the country,
no record of their day's march, and making no observations to help either
themselves or anybody else; unable to say where they have been, how they
got there, or how they got home again. Some men have a natural instinct
for direction, and I know some who could start, say from Coolgardie, to
ride seventy miles east and return, then perhaps sixty to the north, and
from that point ride across to their seventy-mile point with great
ease and certainty, having no notion of the distance or point of the
compass.
A good many prospectors, depending on their black-boys almost entirely,
wander from one range of hills to another, dodge here and there for water,
keep no count or reckoning, and only return by the help of their guide
when the "tucker-bags" are empty; others make a practice of standing two
sticks in the ground on camping at night, to remind them of the course
they have travelled during the day and must resume in the morning.
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