They were greatly disappointed at their want of success, and returned
by a slightly different route, searching in every likely-looking place
for water, but finding none, though they are both of opinion that the
country is watered by native wells, and had they had sufficient time
to have more thoroughly investigated it, they would doubtless have
been more successful. The Everard Range being about sixty miles south
from the Musgrave chain, and they not having sighted it, I can
scarcely think they could have been within 100 miles of the Musgrave,
as from high sandhills that high feature should be visible at that
distance.
When Alec Ross and I returned from the west the others had been back
some days, and were most anxious to hear how we had got on out west.
The usual anxiety at the camp was the question of water supply; I had
found so little where I had been, and the water here was failing
rapidly every day. Had it not been for last night's rain, we should be
in a great difficulty this morning. Now, however, we had got our
supply replenished by the light rain, and for the moment all was well;
but it did not follow that because it rained here it must also rain at
the little dam 160 miles away.
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