Beyond this their
efforts were in vain, they fought their way to within a hundred miles of
Shark's Bay, but they had then been so long without water that it was
courting certain death to proceed. Even during the retreat to the
Murchison the lives of the horses were only saved by the party
accidentally finding a small native well in a most unexpected situation,
namely, in the middle of a bare ironstone plain.
Pushing on ahead of his party, Austin reached the Murchison twenty-five
miles south-west of his former course, but the river was the same, or
worse, tantalising him with pools of salt water.
A desperate search was made to the southward, during a day of fierce and
terrible heat, and when in utter despair they, on the second day, made
for some small hills that they sighted, providentially, they found both
water and grass. The whole of the party were then moved to this spot,
which out of gratitude was named Mount Welcome.
Nothing daunted by the sufferings he had undergone, Austin now made
another attempt to reach Shark's Bay. On their way to the Murchison they
captured an old native, and took him with them to point out the watering
places of the blacks.
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