Browne cross-questioned
him.
It appeared quite clear to us that he was aware of the existence of large
water somewhere or other to the northward and westward. He pointed from
W.N.W. round to the eastward of north, and explained that large waves
higher than his head broke on the shore. On my shewing him the fish
figured in Sir Thomas Mitchell's work he knew only the cod. Of the fish
figured in Cuvier's works he gave specific names to those he recognised,
as the hippocampus, the turtle, and several sea fish, as the chetodon,
but all the others he included under one generic name, that of "guia,"
fish.
He put his hands very cautiously on the snakes, and withdrew them
suddenly as if he expected they would bite him, and evinced great
astonishment when he felt nothing but the soft paper. On being asked, he
expressed his readiness to accompany us when there should be water, but
said we should not have rain yet. I must confess this old native raised
my hopes, and made me again anxious for the moment when we should resume
our labours, but when that time was to come God only knew.
It had been to no purpose that we had traversed the country in search for
water. None any longer remained on the parched surface of the stony
desert, if I except what remained at the Depot, and the little in the
creek to the eastward. There were indeed the ravages of floods and the
vestiges of inundations to be seen in the neighbourhood of every creek we
had traced, and upon every plain we had crossed, but the element that had
left such marks of its fury was no where to be found.
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