At length everything was ready, and I paid a final farewell, as I thought, to my black friends in Cambridge Gulf, after a little over eighteen months’ residence among them. They knew I was venturing on a long journey overland to another part of the country many moons distant, in the hope of being able to get into touch with my own people; and though they realised they should never see me again, they thought my departure a very natural thing. The night before we left, a great corroboree was held in my honour. We had a very affectionate leave-taking, and a body of the natives escorted us for the first 100 miles or so of our trip. At last, however, Yamba, myself, and the faithful dog were left to continue our wanderings alone. The reliance I placed upon this woman by the way was absolute and unquestioning. I knew that alone I could not live a day in the awful wilderness through which we were to pass; nor could any solitary white man. By this time, however, I had had innumerable demonstrations of Yamba’s almost miraculous powers in the way of providing food and water when, to the ordinary eye, neither was forthcoming. I should have mentioned that before leaving my black people I had provided myself with what I may term a native passport—a kind of Masonic mystic stick, inscribed with certain cabalistic characters. Every chief carried one of these sticks. I carried mine in my long, luxuriant hair, which I wore “bun” fashion, held in a net of opossum hair. This passport stick proved invaluable as a means of putting us on good terms with the different tribes we encountered. The chiefs of the blacks never ventured out of their own country without one of these mysterious sticks, neither did the native message-bearers. I am sure I should not have been able to travel far without mine.
Whenever I encountered a strange tribe I always asked to be taken before the chief, and when in his presence I presented my little stick, he would at once manifest the greatest friendliness, and offer us food and drink. Then, before I took my departure, he also would inscribe his sign upon the message stick, handing it back to me and probably sending me on to another tribe with an escort. It often happened, however, that I was personally introduced to another tribe whose “frontier” joined that of my late hosts, and in such cases my passport was unnecessary.
At first the country through which our wanderings led us was hilly and well wooded, the trees being particularly fine, many of them towering up to a height of 150 feet or 200 feet. Our principal food consisted of roots, rats, snakes, opossum, and kangaroo. The physical conditions of the country were constantly changing as we moved farther eastward, and Yamba’s ingenuity was often sorely taxed to detect the whereabouts of the various roots necessary for food. It was obviously unfair to expect her to be familiar with the flora and fauna of every part of the great Australian Continent. Sometimes she was absolutely nonplused, and had to stay a few days with a tribe until the women initiated her into the best methods of cooking the roots of the country. And often we could not understand the language. In such cases, though, when spoken words were unlike those uttered in Yamba’s country, we resorted to a wonderful sign-language which appears to be general among the Australian blacks. All that Yamba carried was a basket made of bark, slung over her shoulder, and containing a variety of useful things, including some needles made out of the bones of birds and fish; a couple of light grinding-stones for crushing out of its shell a very sustaining kind of nut found on the palm trees, &c. Day after day we walked steadily on in an easterly direction, guiding ourselves in the daytime by the sun, and in the evening by opossum scratches on trees and the positions of the ant-hills, which are always built facing the east. We crossed many creeks and rivers, sometimes wading and at others time swimming.
Gradually we left the hilly country behind, and after about five or six weeks’ tramping got into an extraordinary desert of red sand, which gave off a dust from our very tracks that nearly suffocated us. Each water-hole we came across now began to contain less and less of the precious liquid, and our daily menu grew more and more scanty, until at length we were compelled to live on practically nothing but a few roots and stray rats. Still we plodded on, finally striking a terrible spinifex country, which was inconceivably worse than anything we had hitherto encountered. In order to make our way through this spinifex (the terrible “porcupine grass” of the Australian interior), we were bound to follow the tracks made by kangaroos or natives, otherwise we should have made no progress whatever. These tracks at times wandered about zigzag fashion, and led us considerable distances out of our course, but, all the same, we dare not leave them. Not only was water all but unobtainable here, but our skin was torn with thorns at almost every step. Yamba was terribly troubled when she found she could no longer provide for my wants. Fortunately the dew fell heavily at night, and a sufficient quantity would collect on the foliage to refresh me somewhat in the morning. How eagerly would I lick the precious drops from the leaves! Curiously enough, Yamba herself up to this time did not seem distressed from lack of water; but nothing about this marvellous woman surprised me. It took us about ten days to pass through the awful spinifex desert, and for at least eight days of that period we were virtually without water, tramping through never-ending tracts of scrub, prickly grass, and undulating sand-hills of a reddish colour. Often and often I blamed myself bitterly for ever going into that frightful country at all. Had I known beforehand that it was totally uninhabited I certainly should not have ventured into it. We were still going due east, but in consequence of the lack of water-holes, my heroic guide thought it advisable to strike a little more north.
CHAPTER VII
The agonies of thirst—A ghastly drink—I ask Yamba to kill me—My ministering angel—How Yamba caught opossum—The water witch—A barometer of snakes—The coming deluge—The plunge into the Rapids—A waste of waters—A fearful situation—Barking alligators—English-speaking natives—A ship at last—I abandon hope—The deserted settlement.
By this time I began to feel quite delirious; I fear I was like a baby in Yamba’s hands. She knew that all I wanted was water, and became almost distracted when she could not find any for me. Of herself she never thought. And yet she was full of strange resources and devices. When I moaned aloud in an agony of thirst, she would give me some kind of grass to chew; and although this possessed no real moisture, yet it promoted the flow of saliva, and thus slightly relieved me.
Things grew worse and worse, however, and the delirium increased. Hour after hour—through the endless nights would that devoted creature sit by my side, moistening my lips with the dew that collected on the grass. On the fifth day without water I suffered the most shocking agonies, and in my lucid moments gave myself up for lost. I could neither stand nor walk, speak nor swallow. My throat seemed to be almost closed up, and when I opened my eyes everything appeared to be going round and round in the most dizzy and sickening manner. My heart beat with choking violence, and my head ached, so that I thought I was going mad. My bloodshot eyes (so Yamba subsequently told me) projected from their sockets in the most terrifying manner, and a horrible indescribable longing possessed me to kill my faithful Bruno, in order to drink his blood. My poor Bruno! As I write these humble lines, so lacking in literary grace, I fancy I can see him lying by my side in that glaring, illimitable wilderness, his poor, dry tongue lolling out, and his piteous brown eyes fixed upon me with an expression of mute appeal that added to my agony. The only thing that kept him from collapsing altogether was the blood of some animal which Yamba might succeed in killing.
Gradually I grew weaker and weaker, and at last feeling the end was near, I crawled under the first tree I came across—never for a moment giving a thought as to its species,—and prepared to meet the death I now fervently desired. Had Yamba, too, given up, these lines would never have been written. Amazing to relate, she kept comparatively well and active, though without water; and in my most violent paroxysm she would pounce upon a lizard or a rat, and give me its warm blood to drink, while yet it lived. Then she would masticate a piece of iguana flesh and give it to me in my mouth, but I was quite unable to swallow it, greatly to her disappointment. She must have seen that I was slowly sinking, for at last she stooped down and whispered earnestly in my ear that she would leave me for a little while, and go off in search of water. Like a dream it comes back to me how she explained that she had seen some birds passing overhead, and that if she followed in the same direction she was almost certain to reach water sooner or later.
I could not reply; but I felt it was a truly hopeless enterprise on her part. And as I did not want her to leave me, I remember I held out my tomahawk feebly towards her, and signed to her to come and strike me on the head with it and so put an end to my dreadful agonies. The heroic creature only smiled and shook her head emphatically. She took the proffered weapon, however, and after putting some distinguishing marks on my tree with it, she hurled it some distance away from me. She then stooped and propped me against the trunk of the tree; and then leaving my poor suffering dog to keep me company, she set out on her lonely search with long, loping strides of amazing vigour.