When Roper
advised, wise men obeyed.
But gorges and ridges were not all Dan had to show us. Twice in our
thirty-five miles of the Roper--about ten miles apart--wide-spreading
rocky arches completely span the river a foot or so beneath its surface,
forming natural crossing-places; for at them the full volume of water
takes what Dan called a "duck-under," leaving only smoothly flowing
shallow streams, a couple of hundred yards wide, running over the rocky
bridgeways. The first "duck-under" occurs in a Ti Tree valley, and,
marvelling at the wonder of the rippling streamlet so many yards wide and
so few in length, with that deep, silent river for its source and
estuary--we loitered in the pleasant forest glen, until Dan, coming on
further proofs of a black fellow's "second-sight" along the margins of
the duck-under, he turned away in disgust, and as we followed him through
the great forest he treated us to a lengthy discourse on thought-reading.
The Salt Creek, coming into the Roper with its deep, wide estuary,
interrupted both Dan's lecture and our course, and following along the
creek to find the crossing we left the river, and before we saw it again
a mob of "brumbies" had lured us into a "drouth" that even Dan declared
was the "dead finish.
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