A Silver Line Shone Out On
The Mountains, And With Our Glasses We Could Make Out That It Must Be A
Waterfall Of Very Large Dimensions.
We at once agreed that it must be the
source of the very river we were on, the Macalister, but, as the sequel
will show, we found so many streams, that most probably we were mistaken in
our judgment.
We resolved to make this charming spot our head-quarters for
the present, as we had everything to be desired - water, game, etc. -
close at hand, and, from the absence of timber, no blacks would be able to
steal upon us unperceived.
Leaving the pilot and one man in charge of the boat, we trudged along
through the high grass, which reached to our middles, and was dripping with
moisture from a shower that had fallen during the night; and, after a
tedious walk, reached the edge of the scrub. It was thicker than anything
we had encountered before, the density of the foliage totally excluding the
sun, and giving rise to a dank humid odour that struck a chill to the heart
directly you entered. We wound along the path, or rather track, that the
blacks had made, with the greatest difficulty. It was all very well for
the troopers, who had stripped, but our clothes hitched up on a thorn at
every other step. One of our most provoking enemies was the lawyer vine, a
kind of rattan enclosed in a rough husk, covered with thousands of crooked
prickles. These, with their outer covering, are about an inch and a
quarter in diameter, and extend to an enormous distance, running up to the
tops of lofty trees, and from thence either descending or pushing onward,
or festooning themselves from stem to stem in graceful curves of
indescribable beauty. From the joints of the parent shoot are thrown out
little slender tendrils, no thicker than a wire, but of great length, and
as dangerously armed as their larger relation. These miserable little
wretches seem always on the watch to claw hold of something, and if you are
unhappy enough to be caught, and attempt to disengage yourself by
struggling, fresh tendrils appear always to lurk in ambush, ready to assist
their companion, who already holds you in his grasp. I have measured the
length of one of these canes, and found it over 250 paces; and this is not
the maximum to which they attain, for I have been assured by men employed
in cutting a telegraph road through the scrub that they had found some over
300 yards long. They seem to retain the same circumference throughout
their whole length, and, as the bushman puts everything to some use, the
lawyer is divested of his husk, and takes the place of wire in fencing,
being rove through the holes bored in the posts as though they were ropes.
It is almost needless to add that this cane derives its 'soubriquet' of
"lawyer" from the difficulty experienced in getting free if once caught in
its toils.
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