At length some natives made their appearance, and showed us where water could be had by digging. This was a most disagreeable and awkward spot to get the camels to, but after a great deal of labour in making a tank, and rolling boulders of rock out of the way, we were enabled to give them a drink. There was but a very poor supply.
The water we got here was in a small gum-creek under the highest hill in the centre of the group upon its northern face. The summit of the hill above it bore 21° east of south, from Mount Ferdinand, in the Musgrave Ranges, and it is sixty-four miles from my camp at Glen Ferdinand water. Alec and Tommy searched for, and found, some other water in rock-holes at the back or south side of this central hill, nearly three miles round. Several more natives came to the camp, and some of them worked a little at watering the camels, but were greatly scandalised at seeing them drink such enormous quantities, and no doubt, in their heart of hearts, they were grieved that they had shown us the place. And in order to recoup themselves in some measure for their romantic generosity, they quietly walked away with several unconsidered trifles out of the camp, such as ration bags, towels, socks, etc. These thefts always occur when I am away. I made one old gentleman who took some things disgorge his loot, and he and his friend who had dined with us went away, in the last stage of displeasure. There are apparently but few natives about here just now; had there been more of them we might have had some trouble, as indeed I subsequently had at the rock-holes at the back of this hill.
The following day we went round to Alec's rock-holes, intending to have dinner, water the camels if they would drink, and fill our casks before plunging again into the scrubs that extended everywhere to the south. To the east a flat-topped, bluff-faced hill was visible. While we were at dinner several natives came and assisted us, and pointed in a direction a little west of south, where they said water existed. The whole space round the foot of the rocks here is choked up with a thick and vigorous growth of the native fig-trees, which grow somewhat like banyan-trees, except that suckers do not descend from the upper branches and take root in the ground alongside the parent stem; but the roots of this tree run along the rocks to find crevices with soil, and then a fresh growth springs up; in general it does not grow very high, twenty feet is about the limit. There was a small creek channel, and mulga scrubs to the west of it, that grew right up to the bank, and any party camping here would be completely hemmed in. I am particular in describing the place, as on a subsequent occasion, myself and the party then with me, escaped death there. I will relate the circumstances further on. Now we left the place after dinner, and the natives accompanied us; we camped in mulga scrubs at about ten miles from the rocks. These young darkies seemed very good, and friendly fellows; in all wild tribes of Australian natives, the boys and very young men, as well as the girls and women, seem to take immediately to white men. The young children, however, are generally very much frightened; but it is the vile and wicked old men that are the arch-villains of the piece, and who excite the passions of the juniors of the tribe to commit all sorts of atrocities.
These fellows were the best of friends with my men and myself; we were laughing and joking and generally having a good time. I amused them greatly by passing a stick through my nose; I had formerly gone through an excruciating operation for that purpose, and telling them I once had been a black fellow. They spoke but little English, and it was mostly through a few words that Alec Ross knew, of the Peake, Macumba, or Alberga tribes that we could talk to each other at all. After this we got them map-making on the sand. They demonstrated that the Ferdinand, which we had left, and had still on our right or west of us, running south, swept round suddenly to the eastwards and now lay across the country in front of us; that in its further progress it ran into, and formed a lake, then continuing, it at last reached a big salt lake, probably Lake Eyre; they also said we should get water by digging in the sand in the morning, when we struck the Ferdinand channel again. Soon after we started and were proceeding on our course, south 26° west, from the rock-water, the natives all fell back and we saw no more of them. In twenty miles we came to the creek, and turning down its channel eastwards we found the well of which they had told us. There was plenty of water in it, no doubt, but we did not require it. The well seemed rather deep. We followed the creek for some distance, at length it became very undefined, and the gum timber disappeared. Only a few acacia bushes now indicated the flow of the water over the grassy mulga flats, which wound about so much around sandhills in the scrub, that I left the creek, and pushed on now for the South Australian Telegraph Line.
I will now give a rapid account of what I said was a narrow escape from death at those rock-holes we had just left. I may say in passing, that what I have recorded as my travels and explorations in Australia in these volumes, are probably not half of what I have really performed, only I divide them under the two headings of public and private explorations.
In the month of December, 1882, I was in this part of the world again. During the six years that had elapsed since my last visit in 1876, a survey party had reached these ranges on a trigonometrical survey, and upon its return, the officer in charge reported having had some trouble and a collision with the natives of the Everard Range. I suppose my second visit occurred two years after that event. I was accompanied on that journey by a very young friend, named Vernon Edwards, from Adelaide, and two young men named Perkins and Fitz, the latter being cook, and a very good fellow he proved to be, but Perkins was nothing of the sort. I had a black boy named Billy, and we had twelve camels. I approached the Everard Range from the south-westward, having found a good watering-place, which I called Verney's Wells, in that direction. There, we met a lot of natives who did not belong to the Everard Range tribes. At Verney's Wells we had a grand corrobboree in the warm moonlight; my young men and black boy stripped themselves, and young and old, black and white, danced and yelled, and generally made the night hideous with their noise till early morning. After the ball a grand supper was laid for our exhausted blackmen and brothers. The material of this feast was hot water, flour, and sugar mixed into a consistent skilly. I had told the cook to make the gruel thick and slab, and then pour it out on sheets of bark. Our guests supplied themselves with spoons, or rather we cut them out of bark for them, and they helped themselves ad lib. A dozen pounds of flour sufficed to feed a whole multitude. We left Verney's Wells and made up to the well in the Ferdinand that I have just mentioned. This we opened out with shovels, and found a very good supply of water. From thence we proceeded to my old dinner-camp at the range, where, as I said before, the whole space about, was filled up with fig-trees. Almost immediately upon our appearance, we heard the calls and cries and saw the signal smokes, of the natives. We had to clear a space for the camp and put up an awning. The water in the two lower holes was so low that the camels could not reach it, nor could we get enough out with a bucket. There was plenty of water in the holes above, and as it was all bare rock we set to work, some of the natives assisting, to bale the water out of some of the upper holes and splash it over the rocks into the lower. The weather was very hot, and some of the old men sat or lay down quite at their ease in our shade. The odours that exude from the persons of elderly black gentlemen, especially those not addicted to the operation of bathing, would scarcely remind one of the perfumes of Araby the Blest, or Australia Felix either, therefore I ordered these intruders out. Thereupon they became very saucy and disagreeable, and gave me to understand that this was their country and their water—carpee—and after they had spoken in low guttural tones to some of the younger men, the latter departed. Of course I knew what this meant; they were to signal for and collect, all the tribe for an attack. I could read this purpose in their glances. I have had so much to do with these Australian peoples that, although I cannot speak all their languages—for nearly every ten miles a totally different one may be used—yet a good deal of the language of several tribes is familiar to me, and all their gestures speak to me in English. I could at any rate now see that mischief was brewing. Near sundown we spread a large tarpaulin on the ground to lay our blankets, rugs, etc., to sleep on. When I had arranged my bed, several old men standing close by, the master-fiend, deliberately threw himself down on my rugs. I am rather particular about my rugs and bedding, and this highly though disagreeably perfumed old reptile, all greasy with rotten fat, lying down on and soiling them, slightly annoyed me; and not pretending to be a personification of sweetness and light, I think I annoyed him a great deal more, for I gave him as good a thrashing with a stick as he ever received, and he went away spitting at us, bubbling over with wrath and profanity, and called all the tribe after him, threatening us with the direst retribution. They all went to the west, howling, yelling, and calling to one another.
Young Verney Edwards was always most anxious to get a lot of natives' spears and other weapons, and I said, “Now, Verney, here's a chance for you. You see the blacks have cleared out to the west, now if you go up the foot of the hill to the east, the first big bushy tree you see, you will find it stuck thick with spears. You can have them all if you like. But,” I added, “it's just suppertime now, you had better have supper first.” “Oh no,” he said, “I'll go and get them at once if you think they are there,” and away he went. I was expecting the enemy to return, and we had all our firearms in readiness alongside of us on the tarpaulin where we sat down to supper. I had a cartridge-pouch full of cartridges close to my tin plate, and my rifle lay alongside also. Jimmy Fitz, Perkins, Billy the black boy, and I, had just begun to eat when we heard a shot from Verney's revolver. I did not take very much notice, as he was always firing at wallaby, or birds, or anything; but on another shot following we all jumped up, and ran towards him. As we did so we heard Verney calling and firing again; Perkins seized my cartridge pouch in his excitement, and I had to get more cartridges from my saddle. In the meantime shots were going off, howls and yells rent the air, and when I got up the enemy had just formed in line. Another discharge decided the conflict, and drove them off.
When Verney left the camp he found a bushy tree, as I had told him, stuck full of spears, and while he was deliberating as to which of those weapons he should choose, being on the west side of the bush, he suddenly found himself surrounded by a host of stealthy wretches, most of whom were already armed, all running down towards the camp. Some ran to this bush for their weapons, and were in the act of rushing down on to the camp, and would have speared us as we sat at supper, at their ease, from behind the thick fig-trees' shelter. Verney was so astounded at seeing them, and they were so astounded at seeing him, that it completely upset their tactics; for they naturally thought we were all there, and when Verney fired, it so far checked the advance column, that they paused for a second, while the rear guard ran up. Then some from behind threw spears through the bush at Verney. He fired again, and called to us, and we arrived in time to send the enemy off, as fast as, if not faster, than they had come. It was a very singular circumstance that turned these wretches away; if Verney hadn't gone for the spears, they could have sneaked upon, and killed us, without any chance of our escape. We must have risen a good deal in their estimation as strategists, for they were fairly out-generalled by chance, while they must have thought it was design. After the dispersion, they reappeared on the top of the rocks some distance away, and threw spears down; but they were too far off; and when we let them see how far our rifle bullets could be sent, they gave several parting howls and disappeared.
I decided to keep watch to-night; there was a star passing the meridian soon after eleven, and I wished to take an observation by it. I told the others to turn in, as I would watch till then. Nearly at the time just mentioned, I was seated cross-legged on my rugs facing the north, taking my observation with the sextant and artificial horizon, when I thought I saw something faintly quivering at the corner of my left eye. I kept the sextant still elevated, and turned my head very slowly half way round, and there I saw the enemy, creeping out of the mulga timber on the west side of the little creek channel, and ranging themselves in lines. It was a very dusky, cloudy, but moonlight night. I dared not make any quick movement, but slowly withdrawing my right hand from the sextant, I took hold of my rifle which lay close alongside. A second of time was of the greatest importance, for the enemy were all ranged, and just ready balancing their spears, and in another instant there would have been a hundred spears thrown into the camp. I suddenly put down the sextant, and having the rifle almost in position, I grabbed it suddenly with my left hand and fired into the thickest mob, whereupon a horrible howling filled the midnight air. Seizing Verney's rifle that was close by, I fired it and dispersed the foe. All the party were lying fast asleep on the tarpaulin, but my two shots quickly awoke them. I made them watch in turns till morning, with orders to fire two rifle cartridges every half hour, and the agony of suspense in waiting to hear these go off, kept me awake the whole night, like Carlyle and his neighbours' fowls.
Our foes did not again appear. At the first dawn of light, over at some rocky hills south-westward, where, during the night, we saw their camp fires, a direful moaning chant arose. It was wafted on the hot morning air across the valley, echoed again by the rocks and hills above us, and was the most dreadful sound I think I ever heard; it was no doubt a death-wail. From their camp up in the rocks, the chanters descended to the lower ground, and seemed to be performing a funereal march all round the central mass, as the last tones we heard were from behind the hills, where it first arose.