nt by road. Unencumbered by the
condensers, which were abandoned as useless since the bottom of both
boilers had burned through, we made fair time, reaching a good
camping-ground two miles from the town on the evening of the second day,
the 30th of December.

CHAPTER III

A FRESH START

Four days sufficed to make preparations for another trip, to hear and read
the news, and write letters. My first, of course, was to my Syndicate, to
report our past movements and future plans, and how I intended making
northward, hoping that change of direction would change our luck.

January 4th we set out with the same three camels, and rations for three
months. My plan was first to revisit some known good country to the south
of Hannan's, and, if unsuccessful, to travel from that point in a more or
less north-north-west direction, and so follow, instead of crossing, the
trend of the various formations; for in travelling from east to west, or
VICE VERSA, one crosses a succession of parallel belts, first a
sand-plain, then a ridge of granite, next a timbered flat, then a stretch
of auriferous country, with possibly a belt of flat salt-lake country on
either side. Since these parallel belts run nearly north-north-west, it
seemed to the mind of the untrained geologist that by starting in a known
auriferous zone, and travelling along it in a north-north-west direction,
the chances of being all the time in auriferous country would be
increased, and the plan worth trying.

Passing the homestead of the Hampton Plains Land Company, where I was
given valuable information and a map by the courteous and kind manager,
Mr. Anderson (now alas! dead, a victim to the typhoid scourge), we
continued on the Lake Lefroy road as far as the Fourteen Mile rock-hole.
This contained water, but so foul that the camels would not look at it.
Nor were we more successful in our next water-hole, for it contained a
dead horse. Leading to this Namma-hole, which was prettily situated on a
low rock at the foot of a rough, broken ridge of granite, surrounded by
green and shady kurrajongs, we found a curious little avenue of stones.
These were piled up into heaps laid in two parallel rows, and at intervals
between the heaps would be a large boulder; evidently this was the work of
aboriginals, but what meaning to attach to it we could not think. The
beginning of our journey promised well for water, for we were again
favoured by a local thunderstorm which,