[Australia Twice Traversed The Romance of Exploration by Ernest Giles]@TWC D-Link bookAustralia Twice Traversed The Romance of Exploration INTRODUCTION 23/50
My belief is that the only cause to be assigned for their destruction is summed up in the dread word "flood." They were so far traced into the valley of the Cooper; this creek, which has a very lengthy course, ends in Lake Eyre, one of the salt depressions which baffled that explorer.
A point on the southern shore is now known as Eyre's Lookout. The Cooper is known in times of flood to reach a width of between forty and fifty miles, the whole valley being inundated.
Floods may surround a traveller while not a drop of local rain may fall, and had the members of this expedition perished in any other way, some remains of iron pack-saddle frames, horns, bones, skulls, firearms, and other articles must have been found by the native inhabitants who occupied the region, and would long ago have been pointed out by the aborigines to the next comers who invaded their territories.
The length of time that animals' bones might remain intact in the open air in Australia is exemplified by the fact that in 1870, John Forrest found the skull of a horse in one of Eyre's camps on the cliffs of the south coast thirty years after it was left there by Eyre.
Forrest carried the skull to Adelaide.
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