re he ascended the sandhill he had seen
the tracks of an emu, and on descending he found the bird's track went
for the little open circle. He then followed it to the spot, and saw a
miniature lake lying in the sand, with plenty of that inestimable
fluid which he had not beheld for more than 300 miles. He watered his
camel, and then rushed after us, as we were slowly passing on
ignorantly by this life-sustaining prize, to death and doom. Had Mr.
Young steered rightly the day before--whenever it was his turn during
that day I had had to tell him to make farther south--we should have
had this treasure right upon our course; and had I not checked his
incorrect steering in the evening, we should have passed under the
northern face of a long, white sandhill more than two miles north of
this water. Neither Tommy nor anybody else would have seen the place
on which it lies, as it is completely hidden in the scrubs; as it was,
we should have passed within a mile of it if Mr. Tietkens had not sent
Tommy to look out, though I had made up my mind not to enter the high
sandhills beyond without a search in this hollow, for my experience
told me if there was no water in it, none could exist in this terrible
region at all, and we must have found the tracks of natives, or wild
dogs or emus leading to the water. Such characters in the book of
Nature the explorer cannot fail to read, as we afterwards saw numerous
native foot-marks all about. When we arrived with the camels at this
newly-discovered liquid gem, I found it answered to Tommy's
description. It is the most singularly-placed water I have ever seen,
lying in a small hollow in the centre of a little grassy flat, and
surrounded by clumps of the funereal pines, "in a desert inaccessible,
under the shade of melancholy boughs." While watering my little camel
at its welcome waters, I might well exclaim, "In the desert a fountain
is springing"--though in this wide waste there's too many a tree. The
water is no doubt permanent, for it is supplied by the drainage of the
sandhills that surround it, and it rests on a substratum of impervious
clay. It lies exposed to view in a small open basin, the water being
only about 150 yards in circumference and from two to three feet deep.
Farther up the slopes, at much higher levels, native wells had been
sunk in all directions--in each and all of these there was water. One
large well, apparently a natural one, lay twelve or thirteen feet
higher up tha