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Thousands of wattled hurdles were purchased in Hampshire, and laid flat on the mud along the main routes to the tents and sheds, but they were quickly trodden in out of sight. Many ponderous engines were bogged on their way to their appointed places; nothing could move them, and they remained looking like derelict wrecks, plastered with mud, sunk unevenly above the axles of their wheels.
Here and there, amid the grey-barked ghostly gums, were oases of green thickets of stunted sandalwood whose evergreen leaves defied alike the torrid summer heat and the black frosts of winter months; but underneath them lay the shrivelled carcasses and whitening bones of hundreds of cattle which had perished of starvation too weak even to totter down to die, bogged in the banks of the creek.
And when one bogged he blocked the trail till it was clear again; nor did the man live who crowded him at such time. "At the end of the trail a man who had killed fifty horses wanted to buy, but we looked at him and at our own, mountain cayuses from eastern Oregon.
Perhaps he would kneel down among those glass bells which, when they are bogged in Essex clay on a winter afternoon, are grimly symbolical of the end that comes to the counter-meteorological hopes of the small-holder.
When we got them within a quarter of a mile of the creek, we cut off about two hundred head of the leaders and brought them around to the rear, for amongst these leaders were certain to be the ones which had been bogged, and we wanted to have new leaders in this trial. Slaughter was on the farther end of the bridge, and could be depended on to let the oxen lead off at the opportune moment.
"'Get your hat, you old dried-up alligator, I shouts, 'you ain't dead yet. You're part human, anyhow, if you did get all bogged up in matrimony. We'll take this town to pieces and see what makes it tick. We'll make all kinds of profligate demands upon the science of cork pulling.
Once when the cars were badly bogged I went to a near-by Arab village to get help. I told the head man that I wanted bundles of brush to throw in front of the cars in order to make some sort of a foundation to pass them over.
"I never stole nothin'. I just came in and found a poor old hen bogged down in a mess of dough, so I rescued her." The other man said nothing for some time, but surveyed California John from head to toe and from toe to head again. "Square," said he at last. "Square," replied California John with equal gravity. They shook hands.
This morning the "Cowal," or watercourse, which had detained the Brothers on their first trip, had to be swum over, and here poor Ginger, one of the horses, got hopelessly bogged, and though got out and put on his legs with saplings, was too exhausted to go on,and had to be abandoned. The distance accomplished was 11 miles. 'March' 11. The line marked by Mr. Jardine was followed to-day.
Wind south-west; clear sky. I intended to have gone north-west from this point, but, in attempting to cross the creek, we found it impassable. My horse got bogged at the first start, and we had some difficulty in getting him out. We were obliged to follow the creek westward for seven miles, where it passes between two high hills connected with the range.
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