Near a turn in the track a black head and shoulder disappeared behind a bush. Surely, I thought, the time for an adventure has come; so, dismounting, I walked back to the turning point and, completely hidden, peeped along the track.
There was a curious sight. Half-a-dozen natives, now in full view, were making a minute examination of the wheel marks. All were gesticulating wildly. No "animal" like this had they ever seen before. I would have given—what could I have given them?—for their thoughts. Again and again they ran along the track for a few yards—they who had been tracking all manner of walking and crawling things all their lives. Next they appeared to be comparing notes of the strange "beast" itself—so I judged from the movements of their arms and bodies.
And thus they were still engaged when I turned Diamond once again, and wheeled northward.
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From the Woodforde to the Tea-tree Well the track was fair—a light loam. The mulga scrub in places is extraordinarily dense. A matter of wonderment to me was how the explorers could have forced a passage for themselves and their animals through those miles upon miles of closely packed trees and undergrowth. One ceases to marvel at the creeping progress they made. You need to be in some such place as this (about the Tea-tree Well) before you realise how brave and venturesome and determined the first explorers were—how terribly hard and dangerous their work.
Now the track is plain enough to Barrow's Creek; anyone may follow it—a fact with which, needless to say, I was not acquainted until I had passed over it. But as the stumps have never been grubbed, and as the ants' dwelling-places, if ever interfered with, have been rebuilt or are in various stages of re-construction—what with one threatening wheel-smasher and the other—the visiting cyclist may easily fancy himself touring in a skittle alley studded with ninety-nine thousand pins.
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The ant hills, ever prominent features in the landscape right through Palmerston, are formed of hard dry clay, or of sand mixed with a cementing solution secreted by the insect. It calls for a very forcible kick to knock the top off even a small one. When broken into, the structure is seen to be cellular, and the dirty-white inhabitants are discovered moving hurriedly over the particles of dry grass or wood which every cell contains.
The cyclist must exercise much caution amongst those pinnacled hillocks and mulga remnants; but on good patches the sensation of sweeping around and in and out through the many obstacles is rather enjoyable. You have some of the delights of cycling and of skating into the bargain.
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