water when they can get anything else. Let them try going without, in
the explorer's sense of the expression, and then see how they will
long for it! The figs on the largest tree, near the cave opposite, are
quite ripe and falling; neither Carmichael nor Robinson care for them,
but I eat a good many, though I fancy they are not quite wholesome for
a white man's digestive organs; at first, they act as an aperient, but
subsequently have an opposite effect. I called this charming little
oasis Glen Edith, after one of my nieces. I marked two gum-trees at
this camp, one "Giles 24", and another "Glen Edith 24 Oct 9, 72". Mr.
Carmichael and Robinson also marked one with their names. The
receptacle in which I found the water I have called the Tarn of Auber,
after Allan Poe's beautiful lines, in which that name appears, as I
thought them appropriate to the spot. He says:--

"It was in the drear month of October,
The leaves were all crisped and sere,
Adown by the Tarn of Auber,
In the misty mid regions of Weir."

If these are not the misty mid regions of Weir, I don't know where
they are. There are two heaps of broken sandstone rocks, with cypress
pines growing about them, which will always be a landmark for any
future traveller who may seek the wild seclusion of these sequestered
caves. The bearing of the water from them is south 51 degrees west,
and it is about a mile on that bearing from the northern heap; that
with a glance at my map would enable any ordinary bushman to find it.
I sowed a quantity of vegetable seeds here, also seeds of the
Tasmanian blue gum-tree, some wattles and clover, rye and
prairie-grass. In the bright gleams of the morning, in this Austral
land of dawning, it was beautiful to survey this little spot;
everything seemed in miniature here--little hills, little glen, little
trees, little tarn, and little water. Though the early mornings were
cool and pleasant, the days usually turned out just the opposite. On
the 11th Mr. Carmichael and I got fresh horses, and I determined to
try the country more to the south, and leaving Alec Robinson and the
little dog Monkey again in charge of glen, and camp, and tarn, away we
went in that direction. At first we travelled over sandhills, timbered
with the fine Casuarina decaisneana, or desert oak; we then met some
eucalyptus-trees growing promiscuously on the tops of the sandhills,
as well as in the hollows. At twelve miles we rode over a low ridge;