had been, and the water here was failing
rapidly every day. Had it not been for last night's rain, we should be
in a great difficulty this morning. Now, however, we had got our
supply replenished by the light rain, and for the moment all was well;
but it did not follow that because it rained here it must also rain at
the little dam 160 miles away. Yet I decided to take the whole party
to it, and as, by the blessing of Providence, we now had sufficient
water for the purpose, to carry as much as we possibly could, so that
if no rain had fallen at the dam when we arrived there, we should give
the camels what water they carried and keep pushing on west, and trust
to fate, or fortune, or chance, or Providence, or whatever it might
be, that would bring us to water beyond. On the 24th August, having
filled up everything that could hold a drop of water, we departed from
this little isolated spot, having certainly 160 miles of desert
without water to traverse, and perhaps none to be found at the end.
Now, having everything ready, and watered our camels, we folded our
tents like the Arabs, and as silently stole away. In consequence of
having to carry so much water, our loads upon leaving Ooldabinna were
enormously heavy, and the weather became annoyingly hot just as we
began our journey. The four camels which Alec Ross and I had out with
us looked wretched objects beside their more fortunate companions that
had been resting at Ooldabinna, and were now in excellent condition;
our unfortunates, on the contrary, had been travelling for seventeen
days at the rate of twenty-three miles per day, with only one drink of
water in the interval. These four were certainly excellent animals.
Alec rode my little riding cow Reechy. I had a splendid gelding, which
I named the Pearl Beyond all Price, though he was only called the
Pearl. He was a beautiful white camel. Another cow I called the Wild
Gazelle, and we had a young bull that afterwards became Mr. Tietkens's
riding camel. It is unnecessary to record each day's proceedings
through these wretched scrubs, as the record of "each dreary to-morrow
but repeats the dull tale of to-day." But I may here remark that
camels have a great advantage over horses in these dense wildernesses,
for the former are so tall that their loads are mostly raised into the
less resisting upper branches of the low trees of which these scrubs
are usually composed, whereas the horses' loads being so much nearer
the grou