Ernest Giles

“ I named this Trickett's Creek, after a friend of Mr. Carmichael's. The range which had thrown out so many creeks, and contained so much water, and which is over forty miles in length, I named George Gill's Range, after my brother-in-law. The country round its foot is by far the best I have seen in this region; and could it be transported to any civilised land, its springs, glens, gorges, ferns, Zamias, and flowers, would charm the eyes and hearts of toil-worn men who are condemned to live and die in crowded towns. ”

“ If the body is weak from exhaustion and fatigue, the brain and mind become dull and sad, and the thoughts of a wanderer in such a desolate region as this, weary with a march in heat and thirst from daylight until dark, who at last sinks upon the heated ground to watch and wait until the blazing sunlight of another day, perhaps, may bring him to some place of rest, cannot be otherwise than of a mournful kind. ”

“ Many an unrecorded grave, many a high and noble mind, many a gallant victim to temerity and thirst, to murder by relentless native tribes, or sad mischance, is hidden in the wilds of Australia, and not only in the wilds, but in places also less remote, where the whistle of the shepherd and the bark of his dog, the crack of the stockman's whip, or the gay or grumbling voice of the teamster may now be heard, some unfortunate wanderer may have died. ”

“ I have called my book The Romance of Exploration; the romance is in the chivalry of the achievement of difficult and dangerous, if not almost impossible, tasks. Should I again be called on to enter the Field of Discovery, although to scenes remote from my former Australian sphere, I should not be the explorer I have represented myself in these pages, if, even remembering the perils of my former adventures, I should shrink from facing new. An explorer is an explorer from love, and it is nature, not art, that makes him so. ”

“ The horses had not been well off for either grass or water at starting, and they were mostly footsore; but in the best of cases, and under the most favourable start from a water, the ephemeral thread of a horse's life may be snapped in a moment, in the height of an Australian summer, in such a region as this, where that detestable vegetation, the triodia, and high and rolling sandhills exist for such enormous distances. The very sight of the country, in all its hideous terrors clad, is sufficient to daunt a man and kill a horse. ”

“ But, alas! how many human hopes and aspirations are continually doomed to perish unfulfilled; and were it not that “Hope springs eternal in the human breast,” all faith, all energy, all life, and all success would be at an end, as then we should know that most of our efforts are futile, whereas now we hope they may attain complete fruition. Yet, on the other hand, we learn that the fruit of dreamy hoping is waking blank despair. We were again in a region of scrubs as bad and as dense as those I hoped and thought, I had left behind me. ”

“ My object, as indeed had been Leichhardt's, was to force my way across the thousand miles that lay untrodden and unknown, between the South Australian telegraph line and the settlements upon the Swan River. What hopes I formed, what aspirations came of what might be my fortune, for I trust it will be believed that an explorer may be an imaginative as well as a practical creature, to discover in that unknown space. Here let me remark that the exploration of 1000 miles in Australia is equal to 10,000 in any other part of the earth's surface, always excepting Arctic and Antarctic travels. ”

“ Mount Gould rose with rough and timbered sides to a pointed ridge about two miles from the camp. The banks of the creek were shaded with pretty trees, and numerous acacia and other leguminous bushes dotted the grassy flooded lands on either side of the creek. The beauty of the place could scarcely be enjoyed, as the weather was so hot and the flies such awful plagues, that life was almost a misery, and it was impossible to obtain a moment's enjoyment of the scene. ”

“ If it is with a thought of pity, if it is with a sigh of lament, that we ponder over the fate of the lost, over the deaths in the long catalogue of the victims to the Australian bush, from Cunningham (lost with Mitchell) and Leichhardt, Kennedy and Gilbert, Burke, Wiils, Gray, Poole, Curlewis and Conn, down to Coulthard, Panter, and Gibson, it must be remembered that they died in a noble cause, and they sleep in honourable graves. ”

“ The country along its banks was excellent, and the scenery most beautiful—pine-clad, red, and rocky hills being scattered about in various directions, while further to the west and south-west the high, bold, and very rugged chain rose into peaks and points. We only travelled sixteen miles, and encamped close to a pretty little pine-clad hill, on the north bank of the creek, where some rocks traversed the bed, and we easily obtained a good supply of water. The grass and herbage being magnificent, the horses were in a fine way to enjoy themselves. ”

“ In a fiery region like to this I am photophobist enough to think I could wallow at ease, in blissful repose, in darkness, amongst cool and watery frogs; but ants, oh ants, are frightful! Like Othello, I am perplexed in the extreme—rain threatens every day, I don't like to go and I can't stay. Over some hills Mr. Tietkens and I found an old rocky native well, and worked for hours with shovel and levers, to shift great boulders of rock, and on the 4th of December we finally left the deceitful Shoeing Camp—never, I hope, to return. ”

“ Nothing could appal the mind so much as the contemplation of eternal solitude. Well may another kind of poet exclaim, Oh, solitude! where are the charms that sages have seen in thy face? for human sympathy is one of the passions of human nature. Natives had been here very recently, and the scrubs were burning, not far off to the northwards, in the neighbourhood of the creek channel. As night descended, I lay me down by my bright camp fire in peace to sleep, though doubtless there are very many of my readers who would scarcely like to do the same. ”

“ Long before the sun himself appears, those avant-couriers of his fiery might, heated glow, and feverish breeze, came rustling through the foliage of the mallee-trees, which give out the semblance of a mournful sigh, as though they too suffered from the heat and thirst of this desolate region, in which they are doomed by fate to dwell, and as though they desired to let the wanderers passing amongst them know, that they also felt, and were sorry for, our woes. ”

“ In the gorge facing us we could discover a glittering little thread of water pouring down in a cascade from the top of the mountain into the gorge below, and upon reaching it we found, to our great delight, that we were upon the stony bank of a beautiful and pellucid little stream, whose almost invisibly bright water was so clear that not till our horses splashed it up with their feet could we quite realise this treasure trove. ”

“ Fort Mueller cannot be said to be a pretty spot, for it is so confined by the frowning, battlemented, fortress-like walls of black and broken hills, that there is scarcely room to turn round in it, and attacks by the natives are much to be dreaded here.
We have had to clear the ground round our fort of the stones and huge bunches of triodia which we found there. The slopes of the hills are also thickly clothed with this dreadful grass. ”

“ Hard by, were some clumps of the fine-looking casuarinas; they grow to a height of twenty to twenty-five feet of barrel without a branch, and then spread out to a fine umbrella top; they flourish out of pure red sand. The large sheet of water at the camp had wild ducks on it: some of these we shot. The day was very agreeable, with cool breezes from the north-west. A tributary joins the Finke here from the west, and a high dark hill forms its southern embankment: the western horizon is bounded by broken lines of hills, of no great elevation. ”

“ The water drained in pretty fast: in an hour the well was as full as ever, and with much purer water than formerly. There was plenty of splendid herbage and leguminous bushes here for the camels. It is altogether a most romantic and pretty place; the little grassy channels were green and fresh-looking, and the whole space for a mile around open, and dotted with shady acacia trees and bushes. Between two fine acacias, nearly under the edge of a huge, bare expanse of rounded rock, our camp was fixed. The slope of the whole area is to the west. ”

“ Our horses fed all night close at hand, and we were in our saddles early enough. I wanted to go west, and the further west the better; but we decided to follow the creek and see what became of it, and if any more waters existed in it. We found that it meandered through a piece of open plain, splendidly grassed, and delightful to gaze upon. How beautiful is the colour of green! What other colour could even Nature have chosen with which to embellish the face of the earth? ”

“ I have often been in such predicaments that I have longed for death, but having as yet returned alive, from deserts and their thirst, from hostile native tribes and deadly spears, and feeling still “the wild pulsation which in manhood's dawn I knew, when my days were all before me, and my years were twenty-two,”—as long as there are new regions to explore, the burning charm of seeking something new, will still possess me ”

“ No one who has not experienced it, can imagine the pleasure which the finding of such a treasure confers on the thirsty, hungry, and weary traveller; all his troubles for the time are at an end. Thirst, that dire affliction that besets the wanderer in the Australian wilds, at last is quenched; his horses, unloaded, are allowed to roam and graze and drink at will, free from the encumbrance of hobbles, and the traveller's other appetite of hunger is also at length appeased, for no matter what food one may carry, it is impossible to eat it without water. ”

“ Therefore, we look forward with anxiety and suspense, hope, love, and fear to a future time, having passed through the portals of the valley of death, from this existence, we shall enjoy life after life, in new body, after new body, passing through new sphere, after new sphere, arriving nearer and nearer to the fountain-head of all perfection, the divinely great Almighty source of light and life, of hope and love. ”

“ One cunning old camel called Cocky, a huge beast, whose hump was over seven feet from the ground, with his head high up in the air, and pretending not to notice anything of the kind, would sidle slowly up towards any people who were eating, and swooping his long neck down, with his soft tumid lips would take the food out of their mouths or hands—to their utter astonishment and dismay. ”

“ I knew at starting a great deal was expected from me, and if I had not fulfilled the hopes of my friends, I could only console them by the fact that I could not even fulfil my own. But if it is conceded that I had done my devoir as an Australian explorer, then I am satisfied. Nothing succeeds like success, but it is not in the power of man—however he may deserve—to command it. Many trials and many bitter hours must the explorer of such a region experience. The life of a man is to be held at no more than a moment's purchase. ”

“ Old Jimmy was a splendid tracker; indeed, no human being in the world but an Australian aboriginal, and that a half or wholly wild one, could track a camel on some surfaces, for where there is any clayey soil, the creature leaves no more mark on the ground than an ant—black children often amuse themselves by tracking ants—and to follow such marks as they do leave, by firelight, was marvellous. ”

“ Bronze-winged pigeons also were occasionally startled as we wandered about the rocks; these birds must have water, but they never drink except at sundown, and occasionally just before sunrise, then they fly so swiftly, with unerring precision, on their filmy wings, to the place they know so well will supply them; and thirty, forty, or fifty miles of wretched scrub, that would take a poor human being and his horse a whole day to accomplish, are passed over with the quickness of thought. The birds we flushed up would probably dart across the scrubs to the oasis we had so recently found. ”

“ Fast asleep is Armor lying—do not touch him, do not wake him; but Armor had to be awakened. But first I saddled and put up everything on the horses. Jimmy's lips were cracked and parched, and his tongue dry and half out of his mouth; I thought the kindest way to wake him was to pour a little water into his mouth. Up he jumped in a moment, and away we went at three o'clock in the morning, steering by the stars until daylight; slowly moving over sandhill after sandhill. ”

“ A few Australian eagles are occasionally seen far up in the azure sky, hovering with astonished gaze, over the unwonted forms below; and as the leading camels of the caravan frighten some wretched little wallaby from its lair under a spinifex bunch, instantly the eagle swoops from its height, and before the astonished creature has had time to find another refuge he is caught in the talons of his foe. ”

“ No doubt these natives carry water in wallaby or other animals' skins during their burning hunts, for they travel great distances in a day, walking and burning, and picking up everything alive or roasted as they go, and bring the game into the general camp at night. We passed through three different lines of conflagrations to-day. I only wish I could catch a native, or a dozen, or a thousand; it would be better to die or conquer in a pitched battle for water, than be for ever fighting these direful scrubs and getting none. ”