The view from the top of the range was very similar to that from Mount Buttfield, only that now to the south we could see an horizon of scrub. To the north, the natives were burning the spinifex, and this produced such a haze that no definite view could be obtained. Other portions of the range quite prevented a western view. The altitude of this summit was a little over 3000 feet above sea level.
Not being able to glean any farther information about the surrounding country, we (con)descended to work in the shady caves, swimming and working alternately during the day, for we had plenty of the ever-recurring tasks to do, namely, the repairing of pack-bags and clothes, and the unravelling of canvas for twine.
The first night we passed here was close and hot. We had so much of sewing to do that we set to work with a will; our clothes also require as much attention as the pack-bags and pack-saddles. No one could conceive the amount of tearing and patching that is for ever going on; could either a friend or stranger see us in our present garb, our appearance would scarcely be thought even picturesque; for a more patched and ragged set of tatterdemalions it would be difficult to find upon the face of the earth. We are not, indeed, actually destitute of clothes, but, saving our best for future emergencies, we keep continually patching our worst garments, hence our peculiar appearance, as our hats, shirts, and trousers, are here and there, so quilted with bits of old cloth, canvas, calico, basil, greenhide, and old blanket, that the original garment is scarcely anywhere visible. In the matter of boots the traveller must be able to shoe himself as well as his horses in these wild regions of the west. The explorer indeed should be possessed of a good few accomplishments—amongst these I may enumerate that he should be able to make a pie, shoe himself or his horse, jerk a doggerel verse or two, not for himself, but simply for the benefit or annoyance of others, and not necessarily for publication, nor as a guarantee of good faith; he must be able to take, and make, an observation now and again, mend a watch, kill or cure a horse as the times may require, make a pack-saddle, and understand something of astronomy, surveying, geography, geology, and mineralogy, et hoc, simile huic.
With regard to shoeing oneself, I will give my reader some idea of what strength is required for boots in this country. I repaired mine at Fort Mueller with a double sole of thick leather, with sixty horseshoe nails to each boot, all beautifully clenched within, giving them a soft and Turkish carpet-like feeling to the feet inside; then, with an elegant corona of nail-heads round the heel and plates at the toes, they are perfect dreadnoughts, and with such understandings I can tread upon a mountain with something like firmness, but they were nearly the death of me afterwards for all that.
In the shade of our caves here the thermometer does not rise very high, but in the external glen, where we sleep in the open air, it is no cooler.
On the 29th we left this cool and shady spot—cool and shady, however, only amongst the caves—and continued our march still westward, along the slopes of the range.
In eight miles we crossed ten creeks issuing from glens or gorges in the range; all that I inspected had rocky basins, with more or less water in them. Other creeks were seen ahead, but no view could be got of any horizon to the west; only the northern and eastern ones being open to our view. The country surrounding the range to the north appeared to consist of open red sandhills, with casuarina in the hollows between. At sixteen miles I found a large rocky tarn in a creek-gorge; but little or no grass for the horses—indeed, the whole country at the foot of this range is very bare of that commodity, except at Sladen Water, where it is excellent.
Since we left Sladen Water the horses have not done well, and the slopes of this range being so rough and stony, many of them display signs of sorefootedness. I cannot expect the range to continue farther than another day's stage; and though I cannot see its end, yet I feel 'tis near.
Many delays by visiting places caused it to be very late when we sat down amongst stones and triodia to devour our frugal supper. A solitary eagle was the monarch of this scene; it was perched upon the highest peak of a bare ridge, and formed a feathery sky-line when looking up the gorge—always there sat the solemn, solitary, and silent bird, like the Lorelei on her rock— above—beautifully, there, as though he had a mission to watch the course of passing events, and to record them in the books of time and fate. There was a larger and semicircular basin still farther up the gorge; this I called the Circus, but this creek and our rock-hole ever after went by the name of the Circus. In a few miles the next day I could see the termination of the range. In nine miles we crossed three creeks, then ascended a hill north of us, and obtained at last a western view. It consisted entirely of high, red sandhills with casuarinas and low mallee, which formed the horizon at about ten miles. The long range that had brought us so far to the west was at an end; it had fallen off slightly in altitude towards its western extremity, and a deep bed of rolling sandhill country, covered with desert vegetation, surrounded it on all sides. Nearer to us, north-westerly, and stretching nearly to west, lay the dry, irregular, and broken expanse of an ancient lake bed. On riding over to it we found it very undefined, as patches of sandhills occurred amongst low ridges of limestone, with bushes and a few low trees all over the expanse. There were patches of dry, soda-like particles, and the soil generally was a loose dust coloured earth. Samphire bushes also grew in patches upon it, and some patches of our arch-enemy, triodia. Great numbers of wallaby, a different kind from the rock, were seen amongst the limestone rises; they had completely honeycombed all we inspected. Water there was none, and if Noah's deluge visited this place it could be conveniently stowed away, and put out of sight in a quarter of an hour.
Returning to the horses, we turned southerly to the most westerly creek that issues from the range. I found some water up at the head of it in rock-holes; but it was so far up easterly, that we could not have been more than five or six miles across the hills from our last night's encampment at the Circus. There was only a poor supply of water in two small holes, which could not last longer than three days at the most. The thermometer ranged up to 104° to-day. Some of the horses are now terribly footsore. I would shoe them, only that we are likely to be in the sandhills again immediately. I did not exactly know which way to go. Mr. Tietkens and I ascended the highest hill in this part of the range. I had yesterday seen something like the top of a ridge south-westerly; I now found it was part of a low distant range, and not of a very promising nature. There was a conspicuous mountain, which now bore north-east about fifty miles away, and I fancied I saw the refracted tops of other ranges floating in the mirage. I thought, from the mountain just mentioned, I might discover others, which might lead me away to the west. Up to the present time we had always called this, in consequence of its bearing when first seen, the North-west Mountain. I thought a change of country might be met with sooner in a north or north-westerly direction than in a west or south-westerly one, as the sources of the Murchison River must be met somewhere in the former direction. I tried the boiling-point of water here, and found that the ebullition occurred at two degrees higher than at the Alice Falls, which indicated a fall of nearly 1000 feet, the western end of the range being much lower than the middle or eastern. We had still a couple of bottles of spirit left in the medical department, and as nobody seemed inclined to get ill, we opened one here. Jimmy Andrews having been a sailor boy, I am afraid had learnt bad habits, as he was very fond of grog. When we opened the last bottle at Christmas, and Jimmy had had a taste, he said, “What's the use of only a nobbler or two? I wouldn't give a d—,” dump, I suppose he meant, “for grog unless I could get drunk.” I said, “Well, now, my impression is that it would require very little grog to do that.” He said, “Why, I'd drink six bottles off and never know it.” I said, “Well, the next bottle we open you shall have as much out of it as you can take in one drink, even if you drink the whole bottle.” He replied, “Oh, all right, I'll leave a nobbler for you, you know, Mr. Giles; and I'd like to give Tietkens a taste; but that [adjective] Gibson, I'll swear he won't git none.” So we opened the bottle, and I said, “Now then, Jimmy, here's your grog, let's see how much you can drink.” “Oh!” said he, “I ain't going to drink it all at once.” “All right,” I said, “if you don't, we shall—so now is your chance.” Jimmy poured out a good stiff glass and persisted in swallowing it raw. In five minutes he was fast asleep, and that was all he got out of the bottle; he never woke till morning, and then—well, the bottle was empty then.