The Explorers (45 page)

So the brothers, taking with them Scrutton and the four black boys, started in chase. They were in camp costume, that is to say, shirt and belt, and all in excellent condition and wind; and now a hunt commenced which perhaps stands alone in the annals of nature warfare. On being detected the natives again decamped, but this time closely pursued. The party could at any time overtake or outstep the fugitives, but they contented themselves with pressing steadily on them, in open order, without firing a shot, occasionally making a spurt, which had the effect of causing the blacks to drop nearly all their spears.

They fairly hunted them for two miles into the scrub when, as darkness was coming on, they left their dingy assailants to recover their wind, and returned to camp laughing heartily at their ‘blank run' and taking with them as many of the abandoned spears as they could carry…

December 25—The rain came down all last night…The leader wished his companions the compliments of the season, and pushed on. The country decidedly improved if the weather did not. The tail end of some scrubs were passed in the first five miles, chiefly tea-tree and oak and, half a mile further on, a fine creek of sandstone rock, permanently watered. At seven miles another similar, but larger, was named Christmas Greek. Here, whilst Mr Jardine was halting in wait for the cattle, he marked a tree
XMAS
1864, in square.

P
ETER
E
GERTON
W
ARBURTON

Enema by Shotgun, 1873

Bearded, gaunt, with deeply set yet penetrating eyes, Colonel Peter Egerton Warburton looked like an explorer, and he suffered like one. His passage across the western interior of Australia, with his son Richard, Afghans and Aborigines, was one of the toughest journeys ever made by an Australian explorer.

Fly-blown camels whose sores had to be emptied of maggots with a pint-pot, constipated camels which had to be relieved by enemas administered through double-barrelled shotguns, demented Afghan camel-drivers, and festering scorpion bites were just a few of the expedition's tribulations. A week or two before the expedition reached safety, Warburton matter-of-factly remarked of his camel-driver: ‘Sahleh's finger is very bad indeed from the scorpion sting…If it continues to get worse without any prospect of surgical aid, someone (not I) will have to chop his finger off with a tomahawk.'

October 19th—Started at daylight, and reached No. 98 at 9.15 a.m. We here feel the advantage of not travelling very far from our last water, whilst any uncertainty exists of our finding any before us.

One camel-man quite unable to move from a bad leg. He had an old sore on his ankle, and one of the camels struck him upon it last night; it is an ugly wound. I have plastered it as well as I can, and hope it will be better in a few days.

This is Sunday. How unlike one at home!

Half a quart of flour and water, at 4 a.m.; a hard, sinewy bit of raw, that is, sun-dried, but uncooked, camel meat for dinner at 2 p.m. Supper uncertain, perhaps some roasted acacia seeds; this is our bill of fare. These seeds are not bad, but very small and very hard; they are on bushes, not trees, and the natives use them roasted and pounded.

20th—Got a pigeon, and some flour and water for breakfast. We can only allow ourselves a spoonful of flour each at a time, and it won't last many days even at this rate.

Killed a large camel for food at sunset. We would rather have killed a worse one, but this bull had in the early part of our journey got a very bad back, and was unable to work for a long time. His wound was not quite healed when we were compelled to load him, in consequence of the loss of our master bull, and so the sore had broken out again, and would have rendered him unfit for work in a day or two; and he might have fallen a prey to the maggots, as a former sore-backed camel did, for they breed in these sores with such wonderful rapidity and in such prodigious numbers that they eat the camel up in a short time.
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21st—Cutting up and jerking camel-meat. The inside has given us a good supper and breakfast. This is a much better beast than the old, worn-out cow we killed before, and we have utilised every scrap, having had a sharp lesson as to the value of anything we can masticate.

22nd—A very hot day. Sent two men out with three days' provisions to look for water to the southward. I hope they may succeed, as they will be able to get a distance of twenty or thirty miles. It is now a fortnight since we first came to the water; all our efforts to get away have as yet failed; we are imprisoned for the present as safely as we should be in jail, only we are much worse fed.

I begin to think it is just possible we may be stopped here till the summer tropical rains fall in January. The heat is now so fierce, that neither we nor our camels could live long without an abundant supply of water; but such a contingency as this would only be a prolongation of our sufferings, it would not save us. I don't want to go south, for it increases the difficulty of crossing the sandhills, without diminishing the distance from the Oakover River, but if we can find water, any direction (except east) is better than staying here; we are all sick of the place.

23rd—Another roasting day.

24th—A close, cloudy heat; it looks like rain…

28th—Had hoped to have started this evening, but one of the camels lately out looks in want of a longer rest. I dare not move a tired camel from here; they will need all the strength we can give them…

29th—A short rain squall passed over us last evening; it has cooled the ground a little. Economy is of course the order of the day in provisions. My son and I have managed to hoard up about one pound of flour and a pinch of tea; all our sugar is gone. Now and then we afford ourselves a couple of spoonfuls of flour, made into paste. When we indulge in tea the leaves are boiled twice over. I eat my sun-dried camel-meat uncooked, as far as I can bite it; what I cannot bite goes into the quart-pot, and is boiled down to a sort of poor-house broth. When we get a bird we dare not clean it, less we should lose anything.

More disasters this morning. One of our largest camels very ill; the only thing we could do for it was to pound four boxes of Holloway's pills, and drench the animal. I hope it may recover, for its loss would be ruinous, leaving us with only five camels, and two of them very weak and uncertain.

One of the Afghans apparently wrong in his head; but it would answer no good purpose to enter into details; he has caused us much inconvenience and trouble.

In the evening the camel was still very sick. When once ill there is little hope of them without suitable medicine, which we have not got, and long rest, which we cannot give.

Very cloudy, but no rain, though it appears to be falling to the southward.

30th—Camel still very bad; going to try an enema from the double-barrelled breech-loader. Our difficulty of getting on will be greatly increased by the loss of this camel, which carries two men. We shall only have five indifferent camels to carry seven men, with provisions and water, the former light enough; but the water is very heavy, yet quite indispensable. Should the animal be unable to travel, we must kill it, and cut off as much fresh meat as we can carry.

The camel-man all right again, and the camel much better this evening. A very cloudy and close night.

31st—Haif a gale from the eastward; most disagreeable, as it blows the sand over everything; and prevents us lighting a fire.

We started from camp No. 98 at 4.15 a.m., our general course being slightly to the westward of south for eleven miles. The camels did the journey well. The wind choked up the well, but it answers our purpose when cleared. We are all most thankful to have got away from No. 98 at last. We have now two known waters to the southward, which will give us all the southing we want; but unfortunately no westing, and leaves us a longer distance for our rush than I like; but I fear we must try it.

The weather being a little cooler, and the camels well watered, we started again at 3.30 p.m. Reached our first well, over heavy sandhills, at 7.30. There is not much water, but enough for our uses. We are now in latitude 20° 20′, and longitude by account 123° 10′; so our position is good.

November 1st—Moderately cool; sent to try the western well. If good enough for us to camp a day or two upon, we shall go to it this morning; if not, we must camp at the middle one, and get what water we can for the camels out of the three wells, distant about a mile or two from each other. Camped at the middle well; the other one having too much sand in it for a man to clear out. Tormented all night by the ants.
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2nd—The well affords sufficient for us, and I send the camels to the others. The ants prevent our doing anything; they leave us no peace. I am afraid of losing the moon, and the comparatively cool nights; we are also eating up our small stock of camel-meat, so I must try to commence our flight on the 4th.

The gale of adversity sends us scudding under bare poles; but it seems our only chance to make a rush for the Oakover. We cannot hit upon any water more to the westward to start from, so we must take our chance of finding a little somewhere in the 150 miles of desert which separate us from that river. We had the misfortune to lose our bottomless bucket by the falling in of our well yesterday; fortunately no one was down it at the time, or he would have been instantly killed, and we should have known nothing about it for a long time. The depth of this well was unusually great, being over nine feet.

3rd—Hot day. The camels' well is a good one, and sufficient for their wants.

4th—We are to commence our flight to the Oakover at sunset. God grant us strength to get through! Richard is very weak, and so am I. To get rid of a small box, we selected a few bottles of homoeopathic medicines for use and ate up all the rest. How much of our property we had thrown away before we resorted to this expedient of lightening the loads may be guessed. I started later than we intended; our course about west by south. The sandhills are more troublesome than we have had them for some time. When we wanted to look north and south for water, the sandhills generally ran east and west; now, when we particularly wish to avoid crossing them, we are compelled to do so from their running north-west by west. The eclipse of the moon darkened our journey for several hours, but we made a favourable stretch westward for the last few miles of our night's journey. I could not go so far as I had hoped, from the fatiguing character of the country. Camped at 3.15 a.m.

5th—A strong east wind is blowing. We are compelled to give up smoking whilst on short allowance of water. It is a deprivation, for smoke and water stand in the place of food. We started west-south-west at 6.30 p.m., and made twenty-five miles, though we had most trying sandhills to cross. I became quite unable to continue the journey, being reduced to a skeleton by thirst, famine and fatigue. I was so emaciated and weak I could scarcely rise from the ground, or stagger half a dozen steps when up.

Charley had been absent all day, and we were alarmed about him when he did not return at sunset. I know not what to do. Delay was death to us all, as we had not water enough to carry us through; on the other hand, to leave the camp without the lad seemed an inhuman act, as he must then perish. It was six against one, so I waited till the moon was well up, and started at 9 p.m. We made about eight miles and whilst crossing a flat heard, to our intense delight, a cooee, and Charley joined us. Poor lad, how rejoiced we were to see him again so unexpectedly! The lad had actually walked about twenty miles after all the fatigue of the previous night's travelling; he had run up a large party of natives, and gone to their water. This news of more water permitted us to use at once what we had with us, and the recovery of Charley put us in good spirits.

It may, I think, be admitted that the hand of providence was distinctly visible in this instance. I had deferred starting until 9 p.m, to give the absent boy a chance of regaining the camp. It turned out afterwards that had we expedited our departure by ten minutes, or postponed it for the same length of time, Charley would have missed us; and had this happened there is little doubt that not only myself, but probably other members of the expedition would have perished from thirst. The route pursued by us was at right angles with the course taken by the boy, and the chances of our stumbling up against each other in the dark were infinitesimally small. Providence mercifully directed it otherwise, and our departure was so timed that, after travelling from two to two hours and a half, when all hope of the recovery of the wanderer was almost abandoned, I was gladdened by the cooee of the brave lad, whose keen ears had caught the sound of the bells attached to the camels' necks. To the energy and courage of this untutored native may, under the guidance of the Almighty, be attributed the salvation of the party.

It was by no accident that he encountered the friendly well. For fourteen miles he followed up the tracks of some blacks, though fatigued by a day of severe work; and, receiving a kindly welcome from the natives, he had hurried back, unmindful of his own exhausted condition, to apprise his companions of the important discovery he had made. We turned towards the native camp, and halted a short distance from it, that we might not frighten them away. I was so utterly exhausted when we camped, at 3 a.m., that it was evident I never could have gone on after that night without more food and water. I would therefore thankfully acknowledge the goodness and mercy of God in saving my life by guiding us to a place where we got both.