Читать книгу Australia Twice Traversed - Ernest Giles - Страница 29

A bluff hill. Quandong trees. The mulga tree. Travel South-south-east. Mare left behind. Native peaches. Short of water. Large tree. Timbered ridges. Horses suffer from thirst. Pine-trees. Native encampments. Native paintings in caves. Peculiar crevice. A rock tarn. A liquid prize. Caverns and caves. A pretty oasis. Ripe figs. Recover the mare. Thunder and lightning. Ornamented caves. Hands of glory. A snake in a hole. Heavy dew. Natives burning the country. A rocky eminence. Waterless region. Cheerless view. A race of Salamanders. Circles of fire. Wallaby and pigeons. Wallaby traps. Return to depot. Water diminishing. Glen Edith. Mark trees. The tarn of Auber. Landmarks to it. Seeds sown. Everything in miniature. Journey south. Desert oaks. A better region. Kangaroos and emus. Desert again. A creek channel. Water by scratching. Find more. Splendid grass. Native signs. Farther south. Beautiful green. Abundance of water. Follow the channel. Laurie's Creek. Vale of Tempe. A gap or pass. Without water. Well-grassed plain. Native well. Dry rock holes. Natives' fires. New ranges. High mountain. Return to creek. And Glen Edith. Description of it.

On starting from Mount Udor, on the 1st October, our road lay at first over rocks and stones, then for two or three miles through thick scrubs. The country afterwards became a trifle less scrubby, and consisted of sandhills, timbered with casuarina, and covered, as usual, with triodia. In ten miles we passed a low bluff hill, and camped near it, without any water. On the road we saw several quandong trees, and got some of the ripe fruit. The day was warm and sultry; but the night set in cool, if not cold. Mr. Carmichael went to the top of the low bluff, and informed me of the existence of low ridges, bounding the horizon in every direction except to the south-south-east, and that the intervening country appeared to be composed of sandhills, with casuarinas, or mulga scrubs.

In Baron von Mueller's extraordinary work on Select Extra-tropical Plants, with indications of their native countries, and some of their uses, these remarks occur:— “Acacia aneura, Ferd. v. Mueller. Arid desert—interior of extra tropic Australia. A tree never more than twenty-five feet high. The principal ‘mulga’ tree. Mr. S. Dixon praises it particularly as valuable for fodder of pasture animals; hence it might locally serve for ensilage. Mr. W. Johnson found in the foliage a considerable quantity of starch and gum, rendering it nutritious. Cattle and sheep browse on the twigs of this, and some allied species, even in the presence of plentiful grass; and are much sustained by such acacias in seasons of protracted drought. Dromedaries in Australia crave for the mulga as food. Wood excessively hard, dark-brown; used, preferentially, by the natives for boomerangs, sticks with which to lift edible roots, and shafts of phragmites, spears, wommerahs, nulla-nullas, and jagged spear ends. Mr. J.H. Maiden determined the percentage of mimosa tannic acid in the perfectly dry bark as 8.62.” The mulga bears a small woody fruit called the mulga apple. It somewhat resembles the taste of apples, and is sweet. If crab apples, as is said, were the originals of all the present kinds, I imagine an excellent fruit might be obtained from the mulga by cultivation. As this tree is necessarily so often mentioned in my travels, the remarks of so eminent a botanist upon it cannot be otherwise than welcome.

In the direction of south-south-east Mr. Carmichael said the country appeared most open. A yellow flower, of the immortelle species, which I picked at this little bluff, was an old Darling acquaintance; the vegetation, in many respects, resembles that of the River Darling. There was no water at this bluff, and the horses wandered all over the country during the night, in mobs of twos and threes. It was midday before we got away. For several hours we kept on south-south-east, over sandhills and through casuarina timber, in unvarying monotony. At about five o'clock the little mare that had foaled yesterday gave in, and would travel no farther. We were obliged to leave her amongst the sandhills.

We continued until we had travelled forty miles from Mount Udor, but no signs of a creek or any place likely to produce or hold water had been found. The only difference in the country was that it was now more open, though the spinifex was as lively as ever.

We passed several quandong trees in full fruit, of which we ate a great quantity; they were the most palatable, and sweetest I have ever eaten. We also passed a few Currajong-trees (Brachychiton). At this point we turned nearly east. It was, however, now past sundown, too dark to go on any farther, and we had again to encamp without water, our own small supply being so limited that we could have only a third of a pint each, and we could not eat anything in consequence. The horses had to be very short-hobbled to prevent their straying, and we passed the night under the umbrage of a colossal Currajong-tree. The unfortunate horses had now been two days and nights without water, and could not feed; being so short-hobbled, they were almost in sight of the camp in the morning. From the top of a sandhill I saw that the eastern horizon was bounded by timbered ridges, and it was not very probable that the creek I was searching for could lie between us and them. Indeed, I concluded that the creek had exhausted itself, not far from where we had left it. The western horizon was now bounded by low ridges, continuous for many miles. I decided to make for our last camp on the creek, distant some five-and-twenty miles north-east. At five miles after starting, we came upon a mass of eucalypts which were not exactly gum-trees, though of that family, and I thought this might be the end of the exhausted creek channel, only the timber grew promiscuously on the tops of the sandhills, as in the lower ground between them. There was no appearance of any flow of water ever having passed by these trees, and indeed they looked more like gigantic mallee-trees than gums, only that they grew separately. They covered a space of about half a mile wide. From here I saw that some ridges were right before me, at a short distance, but where our line of march would intersect them they seemed so scrubby and stony I wished to avoid them. At one point I discerned a notch or gap. The horses were now very troublesome to drive, the poor creatures being very bad with thirst. I turned on the bearing that would take me back to the old creek, which seemed the only spot in this desolate region where water could be found, and there we had to dig to get it. At one place on the ridges before us appeared a few pine-trees (Callitris) which enliven any region they inhabit, and there is usually water in their neighbourhood. The rocks from which the pines grew were much broken; they were yet, however, five or six miles away. We travelled directly towards them, and upon approaching, I found the rocks upheaved in a most singular manner, and a few gum-trees were visible at the foot of the ridge. I directed Carmichael and Robinson to avoid the stones as much as possible, while I rode over to see whether there was a creek or any other place where water might be procured. On approaching the rocks at the foot of the ridge, I found several enormous overhanging ledges of sandstone, under which the natives had evidently been encamped long and frequently; and there was the channel of a small watercourse scarcely more than six feet wide. I rode over to another overhanging ledge and found it formed a verandah wide enough to make a large cave; upon the walls of this, the natives had painted strange devices of snakes, principally in white; the children had scratched imperfect shapes of hands with bits of charcoal. The whole length of this cave had frequently been a large encampment. Looking about with some hopes of finding the place where these children of the wilderness obtained water, I espied about a hundred yards away, and on the opposite side of the little glen or valley, a very peculiar looking crevice between two huge blocks of sandstone, and apparently not more than a yard wide. I rode over to this spot, and to my great delight found a most excellent little rock tarn, of nearly an oblong shape, containing a most welcome and opportune supply of the fluid I was so anxious to discover. Some green slime rested on a portion of the surface, but the rest was all clear and pure water. My horse must have thought me mad, and any one who had seen me might have thought I had suddenly espied some basilisk, or cockatrice, or mailed saurian; for just as the horse was preparing to dip his nose in the water he so greatly wanted, I turned him away and made him gallop off after his and my companions, who were slowly passing away from this liquid prize. When I hailed, and overtook them, they could scarcely believe that our wants were to be so soon and so agreeably relieved. There was abundance of water for all our requirements here, but the approach was so narrow that only two horses could drink at one time, and we had great difficulty in preventing some of the horses from precipitating themselves, loads and all, into the inviting fluid. No one who has not experienced it, can imagine the pleasure which the finding of such a treasure confers on the thirsty, hungry, and weary traveller; all his troubles for the time are at an end. Thirst, that dire affliction that besets the wanderer in the Australian wilds, at last is quenched; his horses, unloaded, are allowed to roam and graze and drink at will, free from the encumbrance of hobbles, and the traveller's other appetite of hunger is also at length appeased, for no matter what food one may carry, it is impossible to eat it without water. This was truly a mental and bodily relief. After our hunger had been satisfied I took a more extended survey of our surroundings, and found that we had dropped into a really very pretty little spot.