Australia Twice Traversed, Illustrated, by Ernest Giles
page 244 of 676 (36%)
page 244 of 676 (36%)
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Cut an approach to the water.
Another earthquake shock. A bough-house. Gardens. A journey northwards. Pine-clad hills. New line of ranges. Return to depot. The following day was Sunday, the 9th of November, but was not a day of rest to any of us. Gibson and Jimmy started back with the packhorses for the Shoeing Camp, while I intended going westward, westward, and alone! I gave my horse another drink, and fixed a water-bag, containing about eight gallons, in a leather envelope up in a tree; and started away like errant knight on sad adventure bound, though unattended by any esquire or shield-bearer. I rode away west, over open triodia sandhills, with occasional dots of scrub between, for twenty miles. The horizon to the west was bounded by open, undulating rises of no elevation, but whether of sand or stone I could not determine. At this distance from the creek the sandhills mainly fell off, and the country was composed of ground thickly clothed with spinifex and covered all over with brown gravel. I gave my horse an hour's rest here, with the thermometer at 102 degrees in the shade. There was no grass, and not being possessed of organs that could digest triodia he simply rested. On starting again, the hills I had left now almost entirely disappeared, and looked flattened out to a long low line. I travelled over many miles of burnt, stony, brown, gravelly undulations; at every four or five miles I obtained a view of similar country beyond; at thirty-five miles from the creek the country all round me was exactly alike, but here, on passing a rise |
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