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Henceforth till the end of the siege, the only water that we found to drink was the brackish and muddy fluid furnished by the lake and wells sunk in the soil. Although it might be drunk after boiling to free it of the salt, it was unwholesome and filthy to the taste, breeding various painful sicknesses and fevers.
Only at the stations is water to be found, and even that is brackish; but the worst trial is the heat, which now, at the end of April, becomes more oppressive every day. The temperature rises nearly up to 105-1/2° in the shade, and to ride full in the face of the sun is like thrusting one's head into a blazing furnace.
The existence of the Great Salt Lake of Utah was known to the early Spanish voyageurs under the intrepid Coronado, through stories told them by the Indians, but there is no trustworthy account of any of them having seen it. To Jim Bridger, the famous mountaineer and scout, must be accorded the honour of having been the first white man to look upon its brackish waters.
As I was better acquainted I camped with them. They said the water there was brackish and I soon found out the same thing for myself. It was a poor camp; no grass, poor water and scattering, bitter sage brush for food for the cattle. It would not do to wait long here, and so they hurried on.
Round the shoulders of the upland, like the arch of a great arm-chair, ran a barren scraggy ridge, whereupon no tree could stand upright, no cow be certain of her own tail, and scarcely a crow breast the violent air by stooping ragged pinions, so furious was the rush of wind when any power awoke the clouds; or sometimes, when the air was jaded with continual conflict, a heavy settlement of brackish cloud lay upon a waste of chalky flint.
Much fatigued with the walking over the sands, and sick with drinking the brackish water of Mislah. Nothing en route to-day except four crows, and a skeleton of a camel. People pretend it does not drink water. It may live on the flesh of the few camels which drop down and die from exhaustion, and on lizards.
At 12 noon they arrived; they had passed my tracks and gone on to Mount Hugh instead of coming on here. I will give their horses an hour's rest and go on to the Strangway Springs. The Paisley Ponds are dry, but there is salt and brackish water three miles lower down the creek. Started at 2 p.m., and at 5 p.m. arrived at the springs, which are about ten miles from the Beresford.
With respect to water, the most important of all supplies, and that which always forms the first object of inquiry among Asiatics, Mekka is not much better provided than Djidda; there are but few cisterns for collecting rain, and the well-water is so brackish that it is used only for culinary purposes, except during the time of the pilgrimage, when the lowest class of hadjys drink it.
Wednesday, 8th June, Mount Dutton. at 9.15 started on a course of 310 degrees. At three-quarters of a mile passed another batch of springs, some of them brackish, and some very good indeed. Leaving them we passed over a good feeding country, crossing several gum and myall creeks, one with polyganum, all coming from Hanson range and flowing into the Neale.
Those days were no more. No vision of loot or luxury allured these. They saw only the yellow sand, the ever-receding oasis, the brackish, undrinkable water, the withered and fruitless date-tree, handfuls of dourha for their food by day, and the keen, sharp night to chill their half-dead bodies in a half-waking sleep.
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