th scrub nearly all
round. The appearance of the northern mountains is singular,
grotesque, and very difficult to describe. There appear to be still
three distinct lines. One ends in a bluff, to the east-north-east of
the camp; another line ends in a bluff to the north-north-east; while
the third continues along the northern horizon. One point, higher than
the rest in that line, bears north 26 degrees west from camp. The
middle tier of hills is the most strange-looking; it recedes in the
distance eastwards, in almost regular steps or notches, each of them
being itself a bluff, and all overlooking a valley. The bluffs have a
circular curve, are of a red colour, and in perspective appear like a
gigantic flat stairway, only that they have an oblique tendency to the
southward, caused, I presume, by the wash of ocean currents that, at
perhaps no greatly distant geological period, must have swept over
them from the north. My eyes, however, were mostly bent upon the high
peak in the northern line; and Mr. Carmichael and I decided to walk
over to, and ascend it. It was apparently no more than seven or eight
miles away.

As my reader is aware, I left the Finke issuing through an
impracticable gorge in these same ranges, now some seventy-five miles
behind us, and in that distance not a break had occurred in the line
whereby I could either get over or through it, to meet the Finke
again; indeed, at this distance it was doubtful whether it were worth
while to endeavour to do so, as one can never tell what change may
take place, in even the largest of Australian streams, in such a
distance. When last seen, it was trending along a valley under the
foot of the highest of three tiers of hills, and coming from the west;
but whether its sources are in those hills, or that it still runs on
somewhere to the north of us, is the question which I now hope to
solve. I am the more anxious to rediscover the Finke, if it still
exists, because water has been by no means plentiful on the route
along which I have lately been travelling; and I believe a better
country exists upon the other side of the mountains.

At starting, Carmichael and I at first walked across the plain, we
being encamped upon its southern end. It was beautifully grassed, and
had good soil, and it would make an excellent racecourse, or ground
for a kangaroo hunt. We saw numbers of kangaroos, and emus too, but
could get no shots at them. In three miles the plain ended in thick,