And in low caverns in the limestone hills, down some
deep fissure, can be seen the waters of a stream, whose rise and course
no man has ever traced. Again a solitary lagoon is found whereon no lily
grows, and wherein no fish swims. Where the belated bushman camping for
the night, finds the next morning that the water has sunk many feet, or
perhaps has risen, when no rain has fallen far or near for months. All
these signs and tokens from the great sea beneath us may serve as guides
to the end.
When one comes to know the real value of water in a thirsty land, it
almost seems like a crime on the part of Nature, that a spring should
rise and flow for a comparatively short distance, to be lost in the sea.
When by placing the source some fifteen or twenty miles away the course
would run for hundreds of miles through a dry country. Can human
ingenuity improve on nature?
In this case nature seems to have laid the ground work of a great
comprehensive continental plain; to have put the lever ready for man to
start it, and though the scheme is one of such magnitude that it may at
first glance seem widely impossible, there is no reason, backed as it
would be by natural forces, that it may not be an accomplishment of the
future.
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