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Updated: May 10, 2025
The water-courses were at their height, and the boat went down the swift current like a bird. The passage proved prosperous and speedy. In less than a third of the time, that would have been necessary for the same journey by land, it was accomplished by the favour of those rapid rivers.
They are furrowed horizontally, licked smooth by the wind and rain. Not only so, but the chalk cliffs are riddled with caves, that are ancient water-courses.
This is from three to four hundred feet deep on all sides except at the lower end, and the sharp slope of the banks, which are all of the richest green, is broken and diversified by the wadys and water-courses which work their way down through the sides of the basin, forming dark chasms or light sunny valleys.
The question of food and water during a prolonged march in that parched season of the year might have caused the gravest difficulties; but they were solved by a wise choice of route along or near water-courses where water could generally be procured. The few days when little or no water could be had showed what might have happened.
Several of the soldiers ran up one of the narrow water-courses, hoping to get a shot at him as he emerged on the open prairie. What was their surprise to meet him coming down. He ran up one ravine, and being half crazed by his wounds, had, on reaching the prairie, turned into the one in which the soldiers were.
Comparatively, indeed, the Darling does assert its superiority over most of the other water-courses of that country; for, at a season when their channels were, in general, absolutely without water, or dwindled down into mere chains of muddy ponds, the Darling still continued to wind its slow current, carrying a supply of excellent water through the heart of a desert district.
Although we were traversing plains, our view was limited by acacias and other trees growing upon them. Notwithstanding that we kept close in to the ranges, the water-courses we crossed could hardly be recognised as such, as they scarcely reached to a greater distance than a mile and a half on the plains, before they spread out and terminated.
The continual repairs of temporary dams, which are nightly trodden down and destroyed by elephants; the filling up of the water-courses from the same cause; the nocturnal attacks upon the crops by elephants and hogs; the devastating attacks of birds as the grain becomes ripe; a scarcity of water at the exact moment it is required; and other numerous difficulties which are scarcely felt by a large population.
Then there are deep, narrow, crooked "rills" which may have been water-courses; also "clefts" about half a mile wide, and often hundreds of miles long, like deep cracks in the surface going straight through mountain and valley. The moon shares with the sun the advantage of being a good subject for photography, though the planets are not.
Sir John French spoke of it, and the British are providing a system of sterilised water for their men. Merely providing so many human beings with water is a tremendous problem. Along part of the line, quite aside from typhoid contamination, the water is now impregnated with salt water from the sea. If even wells contain dead bodies, how about the open water-courses? Wounded men must have water.
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