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Grandfather always knew just the right day to go, and this time when 'he looked down on the pond from the hill he saw hardly any water at all, nothing much but ducks. It was the chance of his life. He slipped down the hill among the scrubs to the cedars and then began to creep carefully up.
It crosses the railway three times before going northward until it is on a level with Jeddo Road. It then turns eastward, cuts across the north of Jeddo Road to Wilton Road West. Northward it runs to the Uxbridge Road, follows this eastward for a few yards, and strikes again northward up Old Oak Road and Old Oak Common Road until it reaches Wormwood Scrubs public and military ground.
They played without snap or dash, and the coach ground his teeth as he noted the lifeless playing so strongly in contrast with that of three days earlier. Just before the first quarter ended, Ellis, in running down under a punt, came heavily in collision with Farrar, of the scrubs, and they went to the ground together. Farrar was up in a moment, but Ellis, after one or two trials, desisted.
It was towards the end of a long drought, and the country was like tinder for hundreds of miles round the ground for miles and miles in the broiling scrubs "as bare as your hand," or covered with coarse, dry tufts. There was feed grass in places, but you had to look close to see it.
In seven or eight miles after starting I got out of the scrubs. At the foot of the mountain for which I was steering there was a little creek or gully, with some eucalypts where I struck it. It was, as all the others had been, scrubby, rocky, and dry. I left the horses and ascended to the top, about 900 feet above the scrubs which surrounded it.
Several times Mortimer had the pigskin, and was able to make good gains. Then the wrath of the coach was turned against the luckless scrubs. "What do you fellows mean?" cried Holwell. "Letting 'em go through you this way! Get at 'em! Break up their plays if you can! Block their kicks. They'll think they're playing a kid team! I want 'em to work! Smash 'em! Kill 'em!"
At eight or nine miles we reached the latter, and another fruitless search was gone through. We then went to another and another, walking over the stones and riding through the scrubs. We found some large rocky places, where water might remain for many weeks, after being filled; but when such an occurrence ever had taken place, or ever would take place again, it was impossible to tell.
Of this they were now convinced, but to make certain, agreed to continue travelling down it for two days more, and with this intent camped on a creek coming in from the southward. The margin of the river is generally open and coarsely grassed, timbered with mahogany, bloodwood, and melaleuca, the points of scrubs and brushwood occasionally closing down to the stream.
By digging we easily obtained a quantity of water, but it was all pure brine and utterly useless. After this we met lake-bed after lake-bed, all in a region of dense scrubs and sandhills for sixty miles, some were small, some large, though none of the size of the first one.
On these plains, where all surrounding trees and shrubs seemed different from those of other countries, the Agrostis virginica of Linnaeus, a grass common throughout Asia and America, but new to me in Australia, grew near the scrubs. Here also grows a new species of Eleusine, being a very tall nutritious grass.* August 24.
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