This course would have taken him through the
heart of the desert, through the very country we now were in. For my part
I think that trade from tribe to tribe sufficiently accounts for the
presence of such articles as tent-pegs and pieces of iron, though
strangely enough an iron tent-peg is not commonly used nowadays, stakes
of wood being as serviceable, and none but a large expedition would be
burdened with the unnecessary weight of iron pegs.

CHAPTER X

THE DESERT OF PARALLEL SAND-RIDGES

My position for Family Well is lat. 22 degrees 40 minutes, long. 125
degrees 54 minutes. The well, as already stated, is situated at the foot
of the southern slope of a high sand-ridge. This ridge is the first of a
series of parallel banks of sand which extend, with occasional breaks,
from lat. 22 degrees 41 minutes to 19 degrees 20 minutes--a distance of
nearly 250 miles in a straight line. From September 16th to November 16th
we were never out of sight of a sand ridge, and during that time travelled
420 miles, taking into account all deviations consequent upon steering for
smokes and tracking up natives, giving an average of not quite seven miles
a day, including stoppages. This ghastly desert is somewhat broken in its
northern portion by the occurrence of sandstone tablelands, the Southesk
Tablelands; the southern part, however, viz., from lat. 22 degrees 41
minutes to lat. 20 degrees 45 minutes presents nothing to the eye but
ridge upon ridge of sand, running with the regularity of the drills in a
ploughed field. A vast, howling wilderness of high, spinifex-clad ridges
of red sand, so close together that in a day's march we crossed from sixty
to eighty ridges, so steep that often the camels had to crest them on
their knees, and so barren and destitute of vegetation (saving spinifex)
that one marvels how even camels could pick up a living. I estimate their
average vertical height from trough to crest at fifty to sixty feet. Some
were mere rises, whilst others reached a height of considerably over one
hundred feet. Sometimes the ridges would be a quarter of a mile apart,
and sometimes ridge succeeded ridge like the waves of the sea. On October
3rd, for instance, I find that we were crossing them at a rate of ten in
forty minutes. This gives a result of 105 ridges to be negotiated in a
day's march of seven hours. Riding was almost impossible in such country
as this, for all our energies were required to urge on the poo