It is always best, or so I heard, when the traveller is alone, or there are only two together, to keep moving—not to linger long at one spot. And I must say that I have noted a spicy and suggestive soupçon of restlessness at night-time in the manners of those few travellers with whom I camped beyond the Alice. The revolver was invariably seen to before turning in.
And, on principle, a revolver should be carried. If whites ceased to carry the weapon, then the natives, observing its absence would grow braggishly bold and presuming.
* * * *
Seventeen miles of bad travelling ground—red loam and sand plains—brings the traveller to the Devonport Ranges. A couple of miles before passing through them, a creek, the Sutherland, was crossed. The white sand in the channel was piled up in strange formations. How terrific and eddying the current of water must be which at wide intervals comes tearing down! As it stood, the bed suggested a reproduction, in the solid, of a narrow strip of wild-surging tempestuous ocean—a series of waves and billows, small mountains high.
Through the range though, it is good riding.
A mile or two beyond the Sutherland, on a flat among the low hills, huge, smooth boulder-like masses of granite threaten to block the way; but the track winds in among them, and out again.
The boulders lie thickly around in every direction, singly or piled one upon another. They are of all shapes—round and oval predominating—and run from scores to hundreds of tons in weight. Some are so perched as almost to tempt the passer-by to bring a crowbar with him next time he comes and tip them over.
These are "The Devil's Marbles," and a very novel and rather fantastic appearance they present. The solitary traveller may easily conjure up images of giant hobgoblins coming along in play hours to practice the game of "Catch"—surely, by the way, the devil's own favorite game.
I was about to sit in the shade of a large boulder, when from the further side of it came out an animal uncanny and weird as its surroundings. In form it resembled an iguana, but was five or six times larger than any one of that species I could remember to have seen, and, while I stood and looked in mild astonishment, it rose on its two long hind feet, and so walked a short distance; then as suddenly "flopped" down again, and disappeared.