The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont

by Louis de Rougemont

“Gibson had left me with a little over two gallons of water, which I could have drunk in half-an-hour. All the food I had was eleven sticks of dirty, sandy, smoked horse, averaging about an ounce and a half each.

“On the first of May, as I afterwards found out, at one o’clock in the morning, I staggered into the camp, and awoke Mr. Tietkins at daylight. He glared at me as if I had been one risen from the dead. I asked him if he had seen Gibson. It was nine days since I last saw him. The next thing was to find Gibson’s remains. It was the 6th of May when we got back to where he had left the right line. As long as he had remained on the other horses’ tracks it was practicable enough to follow him, but the wretched man had left them and gone away in a far more southerly direction, having the most difficult sand-hills to cross at right angles. We found he had burnt a patch of spinifex where he had left the other horses’ tracks.

“Whether he had made any mistake in steering by the compass or not it is impossible to say; but instead of going east, as he should have done, he actually went south, or very near it.

“I was sorry to think that the unfortunate man’s last sensible moments must have been embittered by the thought that, as he had lost himself in the capacity of messenger for my relief, I, too, must necessarily fall a victim to his mishap.

“I called this terrible region, lying between the Rawlinson Range and the next permanent water that may eventually be found to the north, ‘Gibson’s Desert,’—after this first white victim to its horrors.

“In looking over Gibson’s few effects, Mr. Tietkins and I found an old pocket-book, a drinking-song, and a certificate of his marriage. He had never told us he was married.”

And now to resume my own narrative. You will remember that I had settled down for a considerable time on the shores of the lagoon, where I had made everything around me as comfortable as possible. Yamba had no difficulty whatever in keeping us well supplied with roots and vegetables; and as kangaroos, opossums, snakes, and rats abounded, we had an ample supply of meat, and the lagoon could always be relied upon to provide us with excellent fish. The country itself was beautiful in the extreme, with stately mountains, broad, fertile valleys, extensive forests,—and, above all, plenty of water. The general mode of living among the natives was much the same as that prevailing among the blacks in my own home at Cambridge Gulf,—although these latter were a vastly superior race in point of physique, war weapons, and general intelligence. The people I now found myself among were of somewhat small stature, with very low foreheads, protruding chins, high cheek-bones, and large mouths. Their most noteworthy characteristic was their extreme childishness, which was especially displayed on those occasions when I gave an acrobatic performance. My skill with the bow and arrow was, as usual, a never-ending source of astonishment. I was, in fact, credited with such remarkable powers that all my ingenuity had sometimes to be brought into play to accomplish, or to pretend to accomplish, the things expected of me. I knew that I must never fail in anything I undertook.

In the interior the natives never seemed to grow very plump, but had a more or less spare, not to say emaciated, appearance compared with the tribes near the coast. For one thing, food is not so easily obtainable, nor is it so nourishing. Moreover, the natives had to go very long distances to procure it.

Besides the low, receding forehead and protruding chin I have already hinted at as characteristic of the inland tribes, I also noticed that these people had abnormally large feet. Also, the beards of the men were not nearly so full or luxuriant as those of the blacks at Cambridge Gulf. The average height of the lagoon tribe was little more than five feet. For myself, I am about five feet seven and a half inches in height, and therefore I stalked about among them like a giant.

Now that Gibson was dead I decided to move my home farther north, and eventually settled down with my family (two children—a boy and a girl—had been born to me during my residence on the shores of the lagoon) in a beautiful mountainous and tropical region 200 or 300 miles to the north. It was my intention only to have made a temporary stay here, but other ties came, and my little ones were by no means strong enough to undertake any such formidable journey as I had in contemplation. I also made the fatal mistake of trying to bring my offspring up differently from the other savage children. But I must relate here an incident that happened on our journey north. Yamba came to me one day positively quivering with excitement and terror, and said she had found some strange tracks, apparently of some enormous beast—a monster so fearful as to be quite beyond her knowledge.