Australia Twice Traversed: The Romance of Exploration, Being a Narrative Compiled from the Journals of Five Exploring Expeditions into and Through Central South Australia and Western Australia, from 1872 to 1876Giles, Ernest
History
Australia Twice Traversed: The Romance of Exploration, Being a Narrative Compiled from the Journals of Five Exploring Expeditions into and Through Central South Australia and Western Australia, from 1872 to 1876
Giles, Ernest
Australia -- Discovery and exploration
Assuredly man in a savage state, is by no means the unhappiest of
mortals. Old Jimmy's faculties of memory were put to the test several
times during the eight days we were travelling from Youldeh to this
rock. Sometimes when leading us through the scrubs, and having
travelled for some miles nearly east, he would notice a tree or a
sandhill, or something that he remembered, and would turn suddenly
from that point in an entirely different direction, towards some high
and severe sandhill; here he would climb a tree. After a few minutes'
gazing about, he would descend, mount his horse, and go off on some
new line, and in the course of a mile or so he would stop at a tree,
and tell us that when a little boy he got a 'possum out of a hole
which existed in it. At another place he said his mother was bitten by
a wild dog, which she was digging out of a hole in the ground; and
thus we came to Wynbring at last.
A conspicuous mountain--indeed the only object upon which the eye
could rest above the dense scrubs that surrounded us--bore south 52
degrees east from this rock, and I supposed it was Mount Finke. Our
advent disturbed a number of natives; their fresh footprints were
everywhere about the place, and our guide not being at ease in his
mind as to what sort of reception he might get from the owners of this
demesne, told me if I would let him have a gun, he would go and hunt
them up, and try to induce some of them to come to the camp. The old
chap had but limited experience of firearms, so I gave him an unloaded
gun, as he might have shot himself, or any other of the natives,
without intending to do any harm. Away he went, and returned with five
captives, an antiquated one-eyed old gentleman, with his three wives,
and one baby belonging to the second wife, who had been a woman of
considerable beauty. She was now rather past her prime. What the
oldest wife could ever have been like, it was impossible to guess, as
now she seemed more like an old she-monkey than anything else. The
youngest was in the first flush of youth and grace. The new old man
was very tall, and had been very big and powerful, but he was now
shrunken and grey with age. He ordered his wives to sit down in the
shade of a bush near our camp; this they did. I walked towards the old
man, when he immediately threw his aged arms round me, and clasped me
rapturously to his ebony breast. Then his most ancient wife followed
his example, clasping me in the same manner. The second wife was
rather incommoded in her embrace by the baby in her arms, and it
squalled horridly the nearer its mother put it to me. The third and
youngest wife, who was really very pretty, appeared enchantingly
bashful, but what was her bashfulness compared to mine, when compelled
for mere form's sake to enfold in my arms a beautiful and naked young
woman? It was really a distressing ordeal. She showed her appreciation
of our company by the glances of her black and flashing eyes, and the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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