The results of our experiments with the supposed auriferous country proved too insignificant for more than a passing mention here. A few colours were obtained, but nothing to give confidence to even the most unambitious goldseeker. Rather disconsolately we prepared to resume our march in a more N.E. direction, and three days later we started on our altered course. The eternal sameness of things in the Australian interior makes daily records of progress unentertaining reading, and though each day's travel comes back to my mind now as I write with painful vividness, yet it but cries out in the same strain as its predecessor and follower, "Sand, sand, everlasting sand."
For many miserable days and weeks we struggled eastward, sometimes deviating to the north or south in vain endeavour to escape unusually deterrent belts of the frightful wastes now so familiar to us all.
Sometimes we would locate a soak or claypan when least expecting such a find, and again, we might be reduced to almost certain disaster before the water-bags were replenished at some providential mudhole in our course. I do not wish to enlarge upon the miseries of our journeyings; we took these willingly on ourselves at the start, hoping for a compensating reward in the shape of valuable knowledge; and is not experience always priceless? Knowledge we did gain, it is true, but not of the kind we had over-fondly anticipated; still, we had not yet reached the planned limit of our expedition, and who knew what might await us in the dim, shadowy mountain that stretched its cumbering height far on the eastern horizon?
We had sighted this landmark nearly a week before, but having been more than usually zealous in our search for the precious metal among the outcropping iron formations now frequently encountered, our rate of travel had been reduced to a few miles each day. Two of the horses were still left us; the last of the ill-fated three had succumbed from sheer exhaustion nearly fifty miles back, but "Sir John" and "Reprieve," though no longer the high-spirited animals they once were, still carried their jolting burdens of tinned meats, flour, and extracts, though their steps were daily becoming weaker, and their bright eyes clouding in a manner that foretold the worst. The camels stubbornly paced ahead, with the great water-bags tantalisingly lapping their tough hides, and the miscellaneous mining implements perched on their hollow backs; they had already served us well and nobly, and I devoutly hoped their vast energies would bear them over the worst that lay before us.
| Taking our Position. |