THE SECRET OF
THE AUSTRALIAN DESERT.
CHAPTER I.
The Start for the Burning Mountain—Sand and Scrub.
It is the beginning of November—November in the Southern hemisphere, not the raw, foggy month of the North—November in Central Australia, where the sun rises hot and red in a breathless morn, and sinks at night in a heated haze, hovering around the level horizon.
It has been a day to doze in the shade if possible, and dream of icebergs. The short twilight is rapidly fading into the darkness of a moonless night. Scarcely darkness, however, for the brilliant constellations of the south and the radiant evening star in the west lend their rays to light up the scene. Under the verandah of a rough hut—mud walls with galvanized iron roof,—three men are sitting indolently smoking the evening pipe that usually follows the last meal of the day. It is far up in the north of South Australia, in fact almost on the boundary line that divides that colony from its dependency, known as the Northern Territory. The hut is the principal building on a cattle-station, where, as on most other outside stations, the improvements are of a very primitive kind. The three occupants of the verandah are—the owner of the station; a young relation staying with him to gain that much-talked-of commodity, "colonial experience"; and a friend, a squatter from a neighbouring run.
"Well," says Morton, the owner, a sun-tanned, wiry little fellow, addressing his neighbour, "what do you say, Brown, to having a look for the burning mountain?"
"Umph!" grunts Brown, who differs considerably in size, owning as he does some six feet two inches of humanity; "isn't this weather hot enough for you without looking for burning mountains?"
"We've nothing much to do for two or three months, and I've made up my mind to see if there's any truth in this yarn the niggers have."
"I never could make head or tail of it," said Brown.
"Nor I," returned Morton; "but although everybody puts it down as a burning mountain, I am not of that opinion. I have questioned them very patiently, and can only find out that there is a big fire always burning in the same place, but when I ask about a mountain, they say no. None of them have ever been there; they have only heard of it from others, and they seem almost frightened to speak of it."