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But then, the farther I got away from poverty the greater the fear I had of it and, besides, there was always before us all the thought of the terrible drought, with blazing runs as bare and dusty as the road, and dead stock rotting every yard, all along the barren creeks. I had a long yarn with Mary's sister and her husband that night in Gulgong, and it brightened me up.
I mentioned the Siberian sand-bars that abounded with ancient mammoth bones; spoke of the large quantities of fossil ivory purchased from the Innuits by the Alaska Commercial Company; and acknowledged having myself mined six- and eight-foot tusks from the pay gravel of the Klondike creeks. "All fossils," I concluded, "found in the midst of debris deposited through countless ages."
If we except the partial and alluvial flats on the immediate borders, and in the neighbourhood of its tributaries and creeks, the Murray might be said to flow through a barren and sandy interior. The appearance of the country through which we passed on the 29th, was far from being such as to encourage us with the hopes of any change for the better.
SECTION I. Seven miles to the north of Venice, the banks of sand, which near the city rise little above low-water mark, attain by degrees a higher level, and knit themselves at last into fields of salt morass, raised here and there into shapeless mounds, and intercepted by narrow creeks of sea.
The country traversed to-day was of the same description as that of yesterday, utterly without grass, and the same tedium and toil were experienced in cutting through the vine scrubs which bordered the running creeks. These were very numerous, and quite uniform in their difficulty, a lane for the cattle having to be cut through each.
"One can understand that; you have better reasons for getting back than the rest of us, though I've no particular wish to loiter up here. Break the trail, Blake; due south by compass!" They plunged deeper into the broken belt, clambering down ravines, crossing frozen lakes and snowy creeks.
The sheep also had fallen away very much, which I attributed to the wet journey they had had; being almost always wet, from crossing rivers and creeks. July 4. Mr. Kennedy and three others roamed this morning to some distance from the camp, when they were followed by a tribe of natives, making threatening demonstrations, and armed with spears; one spear was actually thrown, when Mr.
An old farmer said it meant "high water," and he was right once, at least, for in a few days afterward we had the heaviest rainfall known in this section for half a century. The creeks rose to an almost unprecedented height.
The tide was on the flow, and as the water came swirling and eddying in from the great passage in the reef five miles away, there came with it countless thousands of fish of the mullet species, seeking their food among the mangrove creeks and flats that lay behind us.
In two hours they returned with the sad tidings that the banks were broken down by watercourses, deep, broad, and boggy; this is a great disappointment, for it will take me a day or two longer than I expected in reaching the sea-coast, in consequence of having to go a long way round to clear the marsh and creeks.
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